


Faded Photographs

by Mango_Marbles



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-06
Updated: 2018-07-26
Packaged: 2019-04-19 06:24:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 59,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14231244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mango_Marbles/pseuds/Mango_Marbles
Summary: Max was determined to save everyone, regardless of what happened to her. If she needs to suffer to save everything precious to her, so be it. Even when her color fades like an old photograph, she knows Chloe will be at her side. An alternate episode 5 and beyond. M due to the in-game themes. Eventual Pricefield.





	1. Retrograde

**Author's Note:**

> This has been a completed work on FF.net since 2016, I figured I should give it a re-read and start getting it over here as well.
> 
> The title is from the song "Retrograde" by James Blake, which I do not own.

"Max Caulfield."

Pause.

"Age eighteen."

The sounds of objects shifting, scraping across bare ground.

"And a little too nosy for her own good."

These words and sounds are muffled when they reach her ears, like they traveled through water to get there, but the voice is unmistakable.

Almost every day for over a month, she heard that voice. Almost every day for a month, she found herself mesmerized by his words. Mr. Jefferson rattled off his profile of her in the same voice he used to lecture his class about chiaroscuro or the importance of timing.

"The perfect opportunity could be moments away, or moments past. You see, timing is what separates good photographers from great photographers. A good photographer sees their perfect opportunity and captures it, but a great photographer finds and captures that perfect opportunity at its peak. Any questions?" he said, so long ago.

And she drank his words in hopes of understanding and utilizing his insight.

God, how naive she's been.

He's preparing a syringe for her, tapping it and making sure there's no air in it.

"Please, don't do this," she begs. "You don't have to do this."

He doesn't like his victims being too conscious. Not out of concern for sparing them some of the trauma, but because it takes away their look of helplessness—the very thing he considers the pinnacle of beauty and innocence. It instills a glassy confusion in their eyes that captures his eye.

She knows this because it's her third time in The Dark Room. No matter how many times she rewound, she came back to the present in the same place, in front of Mr. Jefferson's pure white backdrop with her hands and ankles bound by duct tape. Her body and mind sluggish from his drugs, the ones that make her nauseous and dizzy when she begins to sober.

The only solace Mr. Jefferson gives her is when he injects her again to render her unconscious. But not knowing what happens when she's so unaware becomes terrifying when she's awake enough to think clearly—or clearer, at least. She knows he takes pictures of her body in its almost lifeless state, but she doesn't know what else he might do. If he drugs and takes pictures of young women in a storm bunker, what else is he capable of with his fucked up mind?

Max's phone vibrates against the coffee table Jefferson set it on as its text tone calls out to her. Jefferson glances back at her and smirks, like her pathetic attempts to reach her phone with her numb, unresponsive body are visible or he can read her mind. But she's not sure who she's trying to fool. He doesn't need to read her mind when her thoughts are illuminated on her face.

He places his syringe—filled to the point she worries it's too much—next to her phone. He removes one of his thin latex gloves, picks up her phone, and taps the screen. She can't see from her angle, and everything's so damn blurred it doesn't matter regardless, but she knows he's pulling up her texts. He's snooping through one of her most personal belongings and she regrets not locking it with a password. She wishes she could yell at her past self for laughing about securing her phone with a password, believing that it'd be unnecessary if she always has her phone tucked snug in her pocket. She tries to crawl toward him, or even yell and scream until he puts it down, but her body still won't obey her. She's been reduced to a rag doll. His unwilling model. His plaything. His toy. His possession.

_Does he even see me as a person anymore?_ she wonders.

"I know how much you must miss your friends," he says, "so I'll let you know what they're up to. Consider it me granting a final request for you, even if you couldn't request it."

"My," he says, "you have an awful lot of texts from Chloe."

_She's alive this time._ Max sighs in relief. _I finally got to save her._

In the first timeline, Jefferson shot Chloe after Max called out to her. She held out her hand and tried to rewind, but Chloe kept falling until she laid next to Rachel in death.

So Max rewound after she escaped The Dark Room to the photo Warren took of them and warned Chloe, but Jefferson still managed to drug her that night. Chloe remained angry about Rachel's death and Max's abduction only fueled that. From what she could learn, she stayed at the Vortex Club with Chloe to keep an eye on anyone who seemed a little too wasted, but Jefferson managed to separate them and drug Max anyway. With Chloe's judgment clouded, she didn't think twice about charging into The Dark Room. But Chloe was too loud. She was always too loud, despite Max's insistence throughout their investigation to be stealthy around The Dark Room and the barn above it.

Chloe didn't listen. She entered The Dark Room after being far too loud and Jefferson heard her. He was ready when she entered and he shot quicker. Max watched her fall again. The bullet hole in Chloe's head glared back at Max like a third eye.

David noticed. He may not have been able to show it properly, but he cared about Chloe like she was his own daughter. He put together their clues a second time, just like in the first timeline, and rescued her from The Dark Room again.

Now she's stuck with Jefferson in The Dark Room for a third time. Maybe it was the fourth or even the fifth time. She vaguely remembered Chloe accepting that Max might have to sacrifice her to save Arcadia Bay, but Max couldn't bring herself to make that choice. She rewound, but vowed she would save Arcadia and Chloe.

Her head hurts thinking about it and she waits to feel an inevitable warm stream of blood trailing down from her nose. What has she changed through all of this? Which choices is the storm connected to, if any? Where the hell did her powers come from in the first place and why her?

Jefferson sits on the plastic wrapped couch, reading out texts to which she half-heartedly listens.

"Chloe asks if she should 'send in the cavalry' because you haven't responded to her in so long," Jefferson says. "Among a slew of other texts about CSI Arcadia Bay."

He types out a response. "I'll let her know that you're fine, just a bit preoccupied."

"Warren wants to know if you're still up for 'going ape' tomorrow."

He continues to read texts at random, but Max only pays attention to a few of them. Brooke and Kate reminded her about their drone and tea dates, respectively. Even Victoria sent a message, if only to give Max a simple 'thanks'.

Finally, he sets her phone back down after removing its battery. This timeline is different already. He's never checked her phone before, but it makes her stomach tighten and breath quicken. He just told everyone that she's fine, simply preoccupied.

_Who will come rescue me? When will they notice my absence if I seem to be fine?_ She wonders as Jefferson checks his filled syringe again.

He steps closer, but she can't back away. Not while her body is so heavy. Not while her thoughts of being denied rescue paralyze her with fear. It takes less than a minute for him to close the distance between them, prick the needle into her neck, and push down the plunger until nothing is left in the syringe.

Her world is fading to black again, but she hears Jefferson's distant words. Words that she fears might be the last to reach her ears.

"Sorry, Max. I do wish the circumstances could have been different. It truly hurts me to deprive the world of a talent like yours."

* * *

Chloe rereads her most recent text from Max. She just wanted to know if Max was okay and she replied with a curt message.

Max: Fine, just busy.

Chloe reads it again after flipping her phone upside down, trying to find some hidden meaning. Some reason for this un-Max behavior. Max never blows her off like this without even explaining what she's doing. Never.

She lets her arms fall back onto her mattress and stares at the ceiling. Beside her, rain pounds against the window covered by her American Flag. It's been raining for a long time now and harsh winds rattle the nearby tree branches.

October 11 is a Friday this year and Max told Chloe about her repeating visions of a tornado destroying all of Arcadia Bay on this day. She picks her phone back up.

Chloe: It's a little windy, but I wouldn't call this a tornado, Max

She sets her phone down again and closes her eyes. The rain is soothing and steady. Soothing enough to quell the storm raging in her stomach—the twists and turns telling her something's wrong, but she doesn't know what. She knows it has to do with Max, something in the deepest knots of her gut tells her this. But her mind refuses to comply. Nothing can be wrong with Max. The universe can't do something like this to her again. Wasn't Rachel enough? Despite her internal war, within the minute she falls asleep.

When she wakes up again, she still hears the rain and wind outside accompanied by the occasional boom of thunder rolling by. She checks her phone for the time and any new messages. October 12. 3AM.

And still no new messages from Max. So, Chloe types in a new message of her own.

Chloe: You've said one thing to me all day. The Vortex Club tire you out that much?'

The message comes out a little harsher than she intended and the unease in her stomach returns. She tries to reason with it, but every thought makes it stronger.

_I dropped Max off at the dorms. She has to be okay,_ she thinks. _As much as I wanted to shoot that smug asshole, Nathan, she insisted it wasn't him who's fully at fault for Rachel's death. She pleaded, actually pleaded, me to ignore any texts from him and said it'd be best for us to stay apart for the rest of the night. Super-Max has to know what she's doing._

The screen of her phone lights up and comes to life with her text tone. Chloe sits up in her bed and fumbles in tense anticipation to check her message. She feels her body deflate like a balloon poked with a needle when the name of the messenger reads 'Warren' and she flops back onto her mattress.

Warren: Hey, Max has been kinda unresponsive to my texts. Did I make a fool of myself at the End of the World party or something?

When she thought the sick feeling in her stomach couldn't get worse, Warren's text pushes it over the edge.

Chloe: No, she brushed me off too

He responds quick enough to let Chloe know he probably kept his phone in his hand while waiting for her reply.

Warren: I'll go over in the morning and check on her

Warren: Maybe she's not feeling well. Or just partied too hard

Warren: No one saw her yesterday. She missed all her classes

Chloe: Go the second you can and let me know what's up.

Chloe: I have a bad feeling

Warren: KK

Warren: Would go now if the storm let up

Chloe sits up, resigning to the fact that she won't be getting anymore sleep. At least not tonight.

Not with thoughts of Rachel in the Dark Room raging through her head. Or the possibility of something being wrong with Max. Her brain whispers 'Max in the Dark Room' to her, but she does all she can to ignore it.

" _No matter what happens," Max says, "never go to the Dark Room alone, okay? Promise me."_

She pleaded with Chloe like she knew more than she let on. Of course she knew more, she rewound. She told Chloe she rewound more than once because it never turned out right.

It kills her on the inside, knowing Rachel's fate and guessing at Max's. It'll kill her until morning, until Warren texts her again about how Max is.

Blackwell Dormitories try to enforce a lock-in from 10PM to 6AM. Chloe would have driven there at 3AM to check up on Max, but the storm still raged on outside and she doesn't want her life to end with a car accident like her father's. So at 6AM, Chloe cradles her phone, waiting for Warren's report on Max.

Around 6:30AM, her phone lights up and she opens the message.

Warren: No one in her dorm has seen her

" _Absolutely do not go to The Dark Room, Chloe," Max insists. "Promise me that you will only go if you take David with you."_

_Chloe rolls her eyes. "Fine, I promise. But you have to promise too. Promise me that you won't go there without me."_

Chloe didn't like the look on Max's face when she promised, but she believed Max regardless. She wouldn't go into a place like that of her own will. Especially not alone. "Where'd you run off to, Max?" Chloe wonders out loud.

Chloe: What about Nathan? Have you seen him?

Warren: In class yesterday, but he's not exactly someone I try to be in contact with. I didn't beat him up for fun, you know

Chloe: I'm just worried about Max

Warren: Same here

Chloe sets her phone to the side. Her mom worked a late shift at the Two Whales yesterday, almost stranded by the heavy rain. David, well, Chloe didn't know what he spent last night doing, but it wasn't something at home. They both still slept.

She grabs her car keys, gets dressed, and begins the drive to Blackwell. Her last bit of hope goes to the thought that Max simply didn't want to see Warren and didn't answer his inquiries at the dorms, but she knows better. She knows something isn't right.

_C'mon, Max. Don't go like Rachel did._

* * *

She hears Jefferson's voice again, cutting through the thick darkness of her mind. Consciousness feels so close, but still so far away and she drifts between the two states like a lone raft amidst the ocean's vast waters.

"I can keep her here as long as I need to, but some of her classmates are beginning to wonder where she went," he says. "No, I don't think anyone suspects me. But when she broke in here, she wasn't alone. I feel her friend might figure it out and come get her."

She hears his footsteps pacing and she's trying to open her eyes, but they're so heavy. Everything feels so heavy.

"Chloe Price. She went to Blackwell. I looked up her file after she mentioned it. She's just another drop out."

_Chloe,_ she tries to say, but her mouth can't form the name. She feels like a prisoner shackled in her own body.

_Is this the cost of saving Chloe, Nathan, and Victoria? Do I have to die in their places?_

After being in the Dark Room for so long, and so many times, death almost seems welcoming to Max. She understands Kate now, better than when she stood atop the roof and held out her hand. She's living the nightmare Kate couldn't quite remember, but knows was real.

"I don't think that would be the best course of action," Jefferson says. "I agree that it would be a good opportunity for Nathan's practice. But the longer we keep her alive, the more dangerous it becomes."

Pause.

"Okay, I'll get her there within the hour and bring her back later. Chloe can come see that Max isn't here. After she does, we'll change the code to the door. Then Nathan has all the time in the world to practice his photography. He'll get it right one day. He has what he needs, he just has to learn to use it."

She's moving in her fear, writhing. But it doesn't last long. She feels the now-familiar prick in her neck, then nothing.

* * *

Chloe picks the lock to Max's dorm room. Unlike on Principle Wells' office door, the skills she learned from Frank work and the door clicks open. She steps inside and Warren hovering over her shoulder. She's not sure what she really expected, but seeing the emptiness of Max's room solidifies that she's missing.

"Max?" Chloe calls. "Max, if this is a game or a joke, it's not funny."

"There's no place to hide in dorms like these," Warren said.

"I know. I was just… hoping."

Chloe sits in the chair at Max's desk and fires up her laptop. "Maybe she left something up on her laptop?"

Warren stands next to the chair and shrugs. "I don't know. It's possible."

Chloe goes through the open tabs of the browser, but only finds camera websites and Max's email. She shuts the laptop and leans back in her chair. "Nothing useful," she says.

She stands and grabs Warren by his elbow, dragging him with her. She knows that if her hunch is right, then time is a luxury they don't have right now. Or, more precisely, a luxury that Max doesn't have right now. "C'mon. We might not be best friends, but we're Max's best friends," she says. "I think I know where she is, but it's not somewhere we should go alone."

By the time Chloe drives them to her house, David is awake. He's eating his breakfast at the table and Joyce left for her shift at the Two Whales already. Chloe sits across from him. She wants to yell at him, call him names and go slam her door, but Max told her David saved her in past timelines. She trusts Max more than she dislikes David.

"Uh, can I ask you something," Chloe says, "David?"

She has his attention. He puts his fork down and nods, watching her with wide eyes. But she can't blame him for being surprised. She's never called him by a proper name before. She sees Warren in the corner of her peripheral vision, shifting uncomfortably and trying to look like his isn't eavesdropping.

"Max is missing and I think I know where she might be," she says.

David nods again, slower this time. "Alright, but that's not exactly a question, Chloe."

"Will you go with us to check it out? It's a dangerous place. We found it while looking for Rachel," Chloe says. "I… think you'll find some information you've been looking for about Blackwell."

"Well, let's head on out," he says. "You can explain more on the way."

They squeeze into the front of her truck and it rattles the entire journey, up to when she turns it off outside the barn. The sun illuminates the would-be peaceful landscape, but a storms still rages in Chloe's gut and she's nauseous. Her hands shake as she pockets her car keys. She's always heard of the phrase 'ignorance is bliss', but now she understands it. There's no way of unknowing or unseeing what they'll find in The Dark Room.

David gives her shoulder a quick pat. "Max won't be dying anytime soon. Not on my watch," he says.

Chloe leads them into The Dark Room, hidden under hay and behind a vault-like door. She holds her breath when she opens the door and squeezes her eyes closed. Simultaneously, she wishes that they don't find Max beyond the door and that they do find her beyond the door.

If they find her, they know. They have answers, closure, and maybe she's alive.

If they don't find her, nothing is guaranteed. Not that Max was ever there or that she's buried with Rachel by now.

She braces herself, preparing mentally for something she will never adequately be prepared for, and nods at David. He enters with his guard up and gun raised, footsteps making barely any noise. Chloe trails behind him with an almost reluctant Warren trailing her.

_Is this the end or the beginning of a journey?_


	2. Shells

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title is from the song "Shells" by Laurel, which I do not own.

Chloe holds her breath as they enter The Dark Room. She's afraid of what she'll find. Of what she won't find. She smells whispers of cleaning supplies, the remnants of someone covering their tracks, and she racks her brain trying to decide who the culprit might be, if not Nathan. The small entrance—full of shelves stocked with food, water, and cleaning supplies—taunt her, a much more malicious sight than the first time she saw them. Innocuous only to those who haven't seen the photos taken here, the lives corrupted.

David leads them farther into the storm bunker with his gun at the ready. "Jesus," he says under his breath, seeing the pictures on the walls. Black and white images immortalizing moments of disconnected terror. "What is this place?"

"An evil lair," Chloe says. She kicks a tiny garbage bin standing in the corner once she sees no one is in the bunker.

Warren pokes at everything, almost methodically. Must be his scientist instinct kicking in. "This place is giving me some serious chills," he says. "Why is the couch covered by plastic? What happens here? Everything is way too… neat and clean."

"Things that should never happen. Things that no one deserves to go through." Chloe heads to the cabinet first, throwing open the doors. Rows of red binders assault her eyes with names written in careful, upright letters on their spines. She skims over each one, expecting to see 'Max' scrawled out to confirm her fears. When she reaches Rachel's binder, her search falters and she runs her fingertips over its plastic casing. She shouldn't dwell on memories of ghosts, but her angels keep disappearing and memories are all that remain.

She pulls herself from the cabinet. "No Max Clues here," she says.

David and Warren don't reply, but she didn't expect them to. She turns her attention to the white backdrop on the far side of the room with the couch staring directly at it. From the pictures in Rachel's binder, her mind tricks her into imagining what it looked like in this room at that time. How, in the corner, Rachel cowered while her dragon tattoo blazed towards the camera, realizing her fate with a half-lucid mind as someone towered over her with a camera. _Who was it? Why didn't you tell me, Max?_

It's difficult not to imagine Max in the same place Rachel was. Scared and alone, unsure of what happens next. Maybe even unable to rewind, or unable to rewind to a useful point in time. She's glad that David's voice pulls her from her train of thought, if only for a moment.

"You might want to see this, Chloe," he says. His voice has the grit she's accustomed to hearing after fighting with him, when he reaches the point of giving up on trying to make her listen to reason. He's sitting at the computer and the tone of his voice doesn't give her much hope.

She stands hovering over his shoulder to see the monitor, and the image displayed makes her cover her mouth with her hand. "Oh no, not Max," she says.

Warren joins them and stands with his mouth hanging open when he sees the picture. "Max..."

It's Max in black and white, but not the Max she remembers.

The picture shows Max laying on the floor, on the white backdrop just on the other side of the room. Her hands are in front of her, bound by duct tape. It's her face that unnerves Chloe the most. She's never seen Max with red-rimmed doe eyes like that, full of confusion, on the edge of a fear she can't understand in semi-consciousness and helpless. Her mind is clearly worlds away as her hair falls across her face and her hands sit uselessly right in front of her. Her lips are just barely parted, looking like she was just about to whisper when the photo was taken.

"She was here," Chloe says. "She was here."

David nods. "The problem is where did she go?"

"We should go to the police. They can't deny that something is going on. There's enough evidence in here to get the sick bastard responsible put in prison for life," Warren says.

"We can go to the police," David agrees. "But this is still Prescott property, so I'm not sure they'll do much. Other than fine us for trespassing. We need to report Max as missing, but taking care of this might be left up to us."

Chloe takes Rachel's binder from the cabinet. She debates taking Kate's as well, but only one should provide enough proof that the police are forced to investigate. Kate doesn't need to be seen like this just yet. Not after being recently released from the hospital because of a suicide attempt. Besides, Rachel would've wanted to be part of taking down the big bad villain of Arcadia, and she could in this way. She rushes out to her beat-up truck with David and Warren trailing behind her.

She lost Rachel and she refuses to lose Max. There's still time to find Max alive, she tells herself. She's Super Max, she has to be all right.

* * *

She feels herself being jostled on the floor of a car, but her mind is too far away to comprehend fully what's happening. It stops. When the door opens, the scent of ocean water is thick in the air and comforting. The same smell surrounded her when she used spend her days playing pirate with Chloe. Jefferson moves her with a strange gentleness she didn't expect after her time spent in the Dark Room, and she wonders if her small amount of consciousness is noticeable to him, if he's going to stick a needle in her neck again.

She remembers looking at David's license plate tracking sheets and how they showed that Jefferson goes to the lighthouse every day. She didn't give it much thought at the time, but wonders if she should have paid more attention to all of the little things she dismissed.

She's on tiled ground and alone again before she realizes it. At least this time she has the sounds of nature surrounding her as she falls to darkness again.

Her head feels a little clearer the next time she's aware. She opens her heavy-lidded eyes, only to find herself staring at the ethereal visage of Rachel Amber. She's leaning over Max, the tips of her long blonde hair hover just above Max's face. In the desert of her mouth, her tongue feels like sandpaper, but she still asks, "Am I dead?"

Rachel smiles. The glow from her vibrantly incandescent blue feather earring gives a ghostly aura to her see-through image. "You're still alive," Rachel says. Her voice is smooth, light, and pleasant, but hollow at the same time. Her words sound distant, like they travel on whispers of wind—the cool breezes that make scorching summer days bearable.

"For how much longer?" Max asks. Her voice cracks, but her throat is just so dry that each word grates against it. She doesn't have the energy anymore for life, would almost welcome death. Any sort of release is better than staying in Jefferson's grasp. He's made her age centuries in a matter of days from being his captive. His latest victim.

Rachel's earring moves with her head when she shakes it. "I don't know, but this isn't your time. Not yet," she says. Then, as an afterthought, adds, "Sorry that this is how we had to meet, Max."

"Sorry we couldn't find you soon enough," Max says. Her voice is a little stronger, but her words slur from the drugs lingering in her bloodstream. Likely far too high of a content, considering how often Jefferson has been injecting her. Considering she is talking to a dead girl in a cabin abandoned next to a lighthouse.

"I made a mistake," she says, "and had to deal with the consequences. But I'm here for you right now. You've been playing with time."

Max knew all along the universe would catch up with her meddling and try to stop her. In this timeline, the tornado never came and Chloe never died, but she is being held captive indefinitely. She didn't want to think about how many timelines must exist in which she dies. Mostly, she didn't want to think of the possibility that this timeline might add to that number. "Guess the universe decided to get rid of the problem's source instead of just wiping out the entire town. I deserve this, but at least everyone else will be alright."

Rachel hums a short series of notes, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. "No one deserves this, Max. But if you want to save everyone, then you have to be willing to suffer for them in order to keep the universe in balance. I was the same as you, but used my power to try and benefit myself. We all have lessons we have to learn."

"Why us?"

"Honestly, I don't know," she says. "Maybe the spirits connected to Arcadia Bay were upset by Jefferson's actions and gave us this ability to stop him, like he was tainting their territory with his perverse obsession. Maybe they knew we would be targets and, if we escaped, we could expose him. I wish I knew, but maybe in the end it was all just a test given to us by the universe asking 'Will you be selfish or selfless?'. I chose selfish with my power, and I died because of it."

"And selfless?" Max asks.

"Well, you're still alive. And I promise you that Jefferson will suffer equally after the public discovers what he put his victims, especially you and me, through."

Max closes her eyes, not having enough energy to keep them open any longer. Just wanting a break for a moment. "That's worth it then. If I'm his last victim, then that's alright," she says.

"Max, I don't have the energy to stay like this much longer. You need to stay strong, alright?" Rachel says. "Promise me. Promise me you'll stay strong and make it through this."

"I promise."

She can't see Rachel's face, but hears her sigh of relief. "I better not be seeing you on the other side anytime soon. And one more thing. Tell Chloe that I'm sorry. I never wanted to leave her, but I made a stupid mistake."

"I'll tell her," Max promises.

"Thank you," Rachel says. "I'll be around. Watching over all of you."

Max finds the strength to open her eyes again. But Rachel is gone and only a spectral blue jay remains in the room with her. Max swears that the bird nods at her before flying away, passing through the cabin's wall like it's merely an illusion.

" _I just don't want Kate to become the next Rachel Amber."_

She said those words to Jefferson a week and an eternity ago. Maybe she should have been suspicious at his subtly defense tone afterward, but he was her _idol._ He was larger than life and standing on a pedestal of fame, offering to bring students up with him.

But his real intention was to bring students down. Take them down to his Dark Room. Take away their innocent white until they're grey and corrupted.

_I can't let him make me the next Rachel Amber, but I wonder if it's already too late._

Max feels herself slipping away, back into the darkness of unconsciousness in the realm between life and death. The minuscule amount of energy she had vanishes, and with it the world does too.

But not before she can wonder, _Was Rachel's spirit really here?_

* * *

Chloe drops David off at home and drives back to Blackwell with Warren. It's some unspoken understanding between them that leads them to Max's room and they sit, Chloe on her bed and Warren on her futon. They don't say anything, just drink in the atmosphere of the room that was the very essence of Max, hoping she might walk through the door alive and well.

The door opens after three quiet knocks and Chloe and Warren rush to it. It's Kate peaking her head into the room. "You can come in if you want, Kate," Warren says.

Chloe shrugs. She has nothing against Kate. Maybe their beliefs don't align, but Kate with her sweet and gentle nature made it clear she didn't mind Chloe's oddities. She didn't deserve what Jefferson did to her, even if she doesn't remember it.

"And Max?" she asks.

Chloe focuses on the walls, the floor, anything to avoid looking at the curious, wide eyes of little Kate Marsh. "We couldn't find her," Warren says.

"Oh," she says. "I wanted to say goodbye to her before my family picks me up for the weekend."

They stand in silence, no use in voicing their worries since they were all shared anyway. The same 'is Max okay' question reiterated a thousand times per second in each present mind.

It's Kate who breaks the silence saying, "I have a few hours, should we make missing posters for her? Rachel Amber's were all over Blackwell."

Chloe shrugs. "We could. It wouldn't hurt, but no one found Rachel. There's no guarantee that someone will find Max."

_I know someone at this school has to be behind this. If Max insists it's not Nathan, then who could it be?_

Kate nods. "I know that, but Max was my angel when I was up on that roof. It's my turn to be her angel."

That made it final and they spent the afternoon making posters, always looking at the door when they heard footsteps and expecting to see Max standing there in her demure and unobtrusive way. She'd ask what they're doing and they'd show her the posters they made with her face plastered on each and every one of them with her name, height, age, and last seen location listed below. She'd look at them in disbelief before breaking out into laughter and they'd join her.

That's all Chloe wants. Max safe and happy where she belongs. Instead, she tags along with Kate and Warren across the campus, helping them put up missing posters. It reminds her of Rachel and when she performed the same task for her angel that she performs for her best friend now. Her best friend and hero, from the time travel tales Max told her.

Max predicted that it would storm yesterday and Arcadia Bay would be destroyed by a tornado. But today is sunny and every piece of the town is in place except the only one that matters the most: Max herself.

* * *

She opens her eyes again, a little more lucid, staring at the ceiling. Someone is shuffling around the small cabin. "Rachel?" she asks, expecting to see her ghost beside her again.

Nathan's face comes into view above her. "What did you say?" he asks.

She presses her lips into a line with the limited control over her body she has.

Nathan sighs and holds a water bottle up so it's in her view. "Look, I know we're not friends. But if you want to survive, you're going to need to accept my help," he says.

"Why help?" Max croaks out. The water makes her realize how long it's been since she's gotten just a sip of anything to drink.

"I never wanted to hurt anyone," he says. He helps her sit against a nearby wall and brings the bottle to her lips so she can drink. "He wants to keep you alive to teach me his style, at least until you starve to death or overdose. Use you while you slowly die, and he gets to photograph it every step of the way. I'm trying to find a way to free you, but if he finds out, he'll kill me."

He holds up a nutritional shake, the kind kids are told to drink when they're underweight. It even has a picture of a cartoon bear on its label. Plain vanilla, but better than anything she remembers at the moment. He lets her have a little more water, and for now she's content that Nathan has bought her a little more time for living.

"Just be patient, all right?" he says. "We don't have to be friends, but I can't let there be another Rachel Amber."

"I saw her," Max says softly, deciding Nathan is being sincere. "She was here."

"You were probably just imagining it. What you're sedated with, it'll do that," he says. "She's...Rachel's..."

"Her ghost. She's still connected to Arcadia Bay."

"Was she...angry?" He can't meet her eyes when he asks. What happened to Rachel wasn't his fault, but he took part in her death and blames himself. She sees the guilt across his face.

"No," Max says.

Nathan sighs and he looks more content than Max has ever seen. "I never wanted to hurt her, or Kate," he says. "It was never supposed to be like this."

"I believe you."

He stands. "That's all I can do for now," he says. "Just hold on a bit longer."

Like Jefferson, he prepares a syringe and she recoils away when he tries to inject her, thinking of Rachel in those pictures. How out of it she was when Nathan overdosed her on accident. How out of it she must have looked when she was half-conscious on the floor of The Dark Room. But she doesn't have the energy anymore to fight and Nathan sticks the needle in her neck before he leaves.

She watches the door open with blurring vision, catching a glimpse of the sun draped upon the trees around the lighthouse and the dirt path leading to it. The Golden Hour. If she could just reach her hand out, touch freedom for only a moment, it would all be worth it.


	3. Weight of it All

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title is from the song "Weight of it All" by Handsome Ghost, which I do not own.

She opens her eyes to see the white couch of The Dark Room right in front of her. Back to where she began, no more sounds of nature to soothe her. She doesn't notice anyone else in the room with her, but her vision is severely limited along with her mobility. When she hears movement behind the couch, she knows she must be unconsciously making some sort of sounds. Enough to attract attention, at the very least.

Jefferson sits on the couch, his hands gloved as always. He holds a piece of paper up for Max to see. The image pasted on it is a photo of her, cropped out of the one Warren took on the night of the Vortex Club's End of the World party. 'Missing' is written across the top and her description is below her picture. _They noticed I'm gone,_ she thinks. _I guess it would be hard to miss, especially for Chloe._ _There's still a chance._

"These are appearing all over Blackwell," Jefferson says. He tears the poster in half. "I guess they just don't understand that some missing things aren't meant to be found. Besides, the only ones who know of this place will think you're dead by now, just like Rachel. And the police? Well, they'd never enter Prescott property without an explicit invitation. Isn't that right, Nathan?"

Nathan appears in her view, taking a seat beside Jefferson on the plastic covered couch. Her grandma used covers like that to protect furniture from dirt. Jefferson uses it to protect from leaving evidence.

"Yeah. We own the cops of this city," Nathan says. His voice doesn't have the Prescott Pride that it used to. He looks pale and shaky, like he's about to throw up. Every few seconds, he wipes his palms on his pants. Nervous.

"What day is it?" Max manages to ask. Her words slur, but she's come to expect it. Still, her voice doesn't quite sound like her own.

Jefferson raises his eyebrows and even Nathan looks surprised by her simple question. "Monday," he says. "After class, of course."

She closes her eyes again and hears footsteps close in on her. Then, Jefferson is kneeling next to her, prying her eyes open with his index fingers. "Hey, hey," he says. "You've slept a lot lately. Open your eyes and we'll let Nathan practice his photography." He glances back at Nathan. "Only having an eye for shadows won't carry you far in this field. You need to develop your style around your strength. Work on techniques that compliment your talent. Like Max did with her more retro style."

Feeling that it might prolong her life long enough to be found, she cooperates. She's not completely aware of everything, her mind not sharp enough to process every bit of stimuli around her, but that's exactly what Jefferson wants.

Flash.

"The slightly unconscious model is often the most open and honest," he says.

Flash.

He moves her slightly between most shots, directing Nathan on where to stand and how to angle the shot for the most effect. The best effect. "You might make your father proud… One day," Jefferson tells him.

Flash.

Max tries to keep her eyes open, to see what they do to her. Just in case. But her eyelids are still so heavy. Always so heavy. And the camera flashes are blinding. So she tries to shield her face with her bound hands until Jefferson slaps them away. "You fucked up the shot, Max," he yells.

She's never heard him so angry, so aggressive, and it scares her. She hears herself whimpering, but everything feels so far away she almost doesn't believe that the sound comes from her. This isn't happening to her. She's disconnected and watching someone else go through this torment, a stranger she's never known. Another face in the crowd, unfamiliar and quickly forgotten.

"Oh, don't worry, Max," he says, his voice soothing yet creepy enough to send chills up her spine. Like a silk bag being put over her head and tied at her neck. The fabric is so soft, until you realize it's getting harder to breathe. "We have all the time in the world now."

As the day grows later, Nathan leaves to go back to his Blackwell dorm. Max wants to hate him and blame him for leaving her alone with the monster named Mark Jefferson, but she knows she's being irrational. She knows that Nathan doesn't have any more choice in this matter than she does. She just hopes that he'll hold true to his word and get her out of The Dark Room alive.

Jefferson doses her again, but she doesn't fade to complete unconsciousness this time. As frightening as it might be, she wonders if she's building a tolerance. She wonders if that will lead to Jefferson accidentally overdosing her.

"Relax," he tells her. "I'm just going to go over these photos while they're still fresh in my mind."

He turns on music, horrible music to Max's tastes, and leaves her in the dark on the white backdrop. The drugs slowly spread through her system and make her tired, but they aren't as strong as they used to be. Without much else to do, she lets herself fall back to sleep and hopes that someone will rescue her when she wakes again.

But not before she hears Jefferson say, "If only you were around back in my day, Max."

* * *

Kate, always faithful, wanted to hold a prayer service for Max. On Wednesday, they do just that in Mrs. Grants' classroom. Chloe looks around at the students who care enough to stop by and listen to Kate lead prayers for Max. It doesn't matter who believes or who doesn't. It's about the thought, the hope for Max to return safely from wherever she ran off to. Wherever she was dragged off to.

They pulled the stools from the lab tables to sit in a circle, even Mrs. Grant herself joined them. Mr. Jefferson stepped in for a second to lament the disappearance of his star pupil, but left shortly after saying he had a lot of work needing to be done.

Chloe thinks about David, the step-dad she never imagined she could accept, much less see as a hero. He works during every moment of spare time he has in an effort to find out more about where Max could be. They reported her missing to the police, but Chloe hesitated to show them Rachel's binder. If they fine her or put her in prison for trespassing and theft, how could she save Max?

Her mom tries to stay strong, but Chloe can see through her facade. She sees the sadness and bits of hope slowly fading in her mom's eyes. Another good soul lost for no reason.

"'No harm overtakes the righteous, but the wicked have their fill of trouble,'" Kate quotes from a small sheet on her lap. She planned her small service in advance. "I know from personal experience that Max is among the most righteous."

Chloe doesn't listen fully to Kate. Instead, she looks at the small group gathered in the science room after school for a prayer service that's nothing more than a formality or a hope. Things that have never been a big part of Chloe's life, or at least haven't been in years.

Kate's present, of course, dutifully reading out bible verses to give hope that God will protect and guide Max back to them. Something about sheep and shepherds? Light, righteousness, and the blessed. Warren and Chloe sit in the circle, both willing to give anything a chance if it means Max will be saved. Brooke showed up for a few minutes in the beginning with Stella, but neither stayed long after sharing hopes of her safe return.

Victoria's presence surprises Chloe the most. Usually Victoria has a scowl on her face or her chin held so high, she'd drown if it rained. She's still wearing her perfectly coordinated outfit—which probably costs more than every piece of clothing in Chloe's closet combined—and her makeup is applied just right to appear natural, more of an enhancement than a faux facial reconstruction. This, along with the frame of her pixie cut hair, gave the hard edges of her face a soft look. It all seems so different, so backwards from the Victoria Chloe remembers.

She doesn't look at anyone when they speak and doesn't speak herself, just stares down at her hands folded neatly in her lap, occasionally unfolding them to straighten her cashmere sweater. She's not close to tears or trying to hide some vast sorrow over Max's disappearance, but she's somber and quiet. It's enough to show her respect towards the situation, and Chloe can appreciate that. Max somehow won the respect of Blackwell's queen bitch.

Kate wraps up her prayers by sharing her own hopes for Max's safe return with beautiful words Chloe thinks might be from a poem, and the group around her nods their agreement. Most of them leave, but Warren, Kate, and Chloe can't find it in themselves to leave just yet.

Chloe's not sure who is surprised the most when Nathan walks in. He sits next to Kate, in the seat vacated by Victoria.

"What do you want?" Warren asks. He's ready to hop from his stool and beat Nathan again if he tries to hurt Kate.

Chloe tries to keep her cool, but she knows Nathan is connected to Max's disappearance. Max said he wasn't behind it, but that doesn't mean he has nothing to do with it.

"I need your help," he says. "I'm afraid."

"Of what?" Chloe asks. It's not every day that a cocky Prescott admits to fear.

"I'm afraid of Jefferson," he says. "I don't want to hurt Max anymore. I don't want to hurt anyone anymore."

"What do you mean you don't want to hurt Max anymore? What have you done, you little shit-prick?" Chloe demands. She's on the edge of her stool, gripping the nearby lab table with enough force to turn her knuckles white just so she doesn't charge forward and pry information from Nathan with her fists. He's lucky she doesn't have one of David's guns with her.

"It's too elaborate for me to explain quickly, but if you take me to the police station, I'll tell you on the way," Nathan says. "I don't want to go by myself. I feel like he's always watching. Like he'll know, and you have no idea what he's capable of."

* * *

They pack into Warren's car, Chloe's wasn't built to hold four people. Three passengers pushed her beat-up truck to its limits of space. Warren sits behind the wheel with Kate in the front seat beside him. Chloe's in the back with Nathan, but she's able to keep watch over him. She'd love for him to slip up just to give her the opportunity to punch his pretty, little face. Warren got to, why couldn't she?

"I really never wanted to hurt anyone," Nathan starts with. "I just ended up being born into a legacy of photographers—career and hobbyist—with twisted visions. Most of their work, you'd never find in any magazine or art gallery. It's not about the art, you know? The photos added to the Prescott collection are reminders of the power they had in the moment the picture was taken."

"What does this have to do with Max and your fear of Jefferson?" Chloe demands. He's taking too long to get to the only part for which she cares. If only she still had the gun from David's collection… Nathan would be a bit quicker in spilling his guts with a gun in his face.

"I wasn't what my father wanted in a son, but my father's legacy wasn't what I wanted in my life. He hired Jefferson to teach me and built a bunker under an abandoned barn we own. Jefferson has been close with my family for a long time, shared their perverse tastes in art. And that's the difference. Jefferson really is in it for the art, while the Prescotts are in it for the symbolism of power. Haven't you ever paid attention to Jefferson's style? All the women bound in suggestive positions."

Nathan clears his throat and looks out the window. "He has me sedate girls at the Vortex Club, whoever he has his eye on. We take them to the bunker, he tries to improve my photography by taking pictures of them half-conscious, and we leave them in front of their dorm in the morning. They think they just blacked out, but I know the truth and it's hard to keep doing this."

Nathan retells his story to the police, but it shook Kate to hear it in the car. She sits next to Warren with a blank face, too deep in thought to show expression. "Was I…?" she asks.

"I...I don't know, Kate," Warren says. "You'll have to ask Nathan. I'm sorry."

"I trusted Mr. Jefferson. I helped him after class sometimes. Maybe he always seemed disconnected, but I thought that after dealing with so many students all day, he might've been worn down. I never saw it as him intentionally being uncaring. But if what Nathan said is true, then I guess I'm wrong," Kate says. She runs her finger tip over the golden cross hanging around her neck. "I don't think I want to know the truth."

"I know it's scary, but if you know the truth, then you can start healing. Really healing," Warren says.

He comforts Kate while Chloe sits to the side and listens, trying to convince herself she's not eavesdropping. While he talks, she notices how he says all the right words to calm Kate, and even brings a small smile onto her face. His black eye is fading, but Chloe will always remember where it came from. She'll remember him sticking up for her and Max against Nathan Prescott, someone with the connections needed to make any Blackwell student's academic life hell.

Nathan joins them at the station's lobby while police rush out of the building. "They're on their way to get Max," Nathan says. He sits in the chair farthest away.

"So we're just supposed to wait here?" Chloe asks. The entire area is ingrained with the scent of coffee brewed day after day. Even now, a full pot sits in a coffeemaker on a nearby table. As much as she craves a cup, she decides against it. There are more important things to worry about, and she's not sure her stomach will handle coffee amidst it's upset in her anticipation.

Nathan shrugs. "The police are taking care of it. You'd just get in their way."

Chloe sinks back into her chair. She doesn't care that she'd be in the way, she just needs to see Max safe and sound.

Warren promises, "We'll be right by her side, no matter what."

Kate nods her agreement, but Nathan ignores them. His job is done and he stares at his phone's screen as he taps away on it, weight lifted from his shoulders.

"Count on it," Chloe says.

* * *

Jefferson doses her again after their session, when she's become too conscious and starts moving too much for him to work with. It looks like the doses he gives her are increasing and she wonders how long she has left before the dose is too high. Or if it's already too late and the dose will be the last. He no longer yells at her for whimpering or because of her silent cries. Instead, he seems to savor every little sound and motion that compose her: the Max who is his masterpiece. His muse.

"Rachel and I… we had a connection," he tells her. His voice soft, almost a whisper. "She loved me, and loved being in front of my camera. But she was always looking in the wrong places."

He goes to his computer; he always goes through the photos after each session. Every time, he tells her that he needs to go over them while they're fresh in his mind.

The more she sees Jefferson, the more she hates him. A slow, quiet hate opposed to the more common quick rage-hate. The kinds that boils and rots a person on the inside. She daydreams about grabbing the syringe from his hand and jabbing its needle into each of his eyes. She wants to hear him suffer for all of the suffering he's caused, just the way Rachel said.

She remembers a saying. Something like 'holding onto anger is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.'

More than anything, Max wants to sleep and wake up elsewhere. She's sick of holding on to the hope of rescue. She's sick of Jefferson, his voice and his pictures. How she feels like she's covered in grim simply from the flashes of his camera and the thinly veiled implications in his words about her perfect image and purity.

She blinks, slow and heavy, and Jefferson is looking at her from behind the couch. "What was that sound?" he asks.

She stares at him, not fully understanding his words. Her mind is too far away, barely there. Besides, she didn't hear a noise. She hasn't heard much at all lately, other than him speaking and his camera flashing.

You're perfect.

Flash.

You're pure.

Flash.

You're mine.

He picks up a tripod—the same heavy ones huddled in the corner of his classroom—and waits around the corner of the arching entrance to his Dark Room. He holds the tripod propped over his shoulder, like a baseball bat.

She hears the door opening, and her hope of surviving returns with enough force to keep her awake for just a little longer.

It's difficult from her position, but she sees a police officer round the corner with his gun drawn. Jefferson swings the tripod at him and the officer, in his surprise, doesn't react in time to avoid being hit on the head and knocked to the floor. It's not until several more officers enter the room that she lets herself believe she's really being rescued. And that's when Jefferson realizes his hobby is over.

The police surround him—guns pointing towards him—and he raises his hands slowly as he hangs his head. He knows he's been beaten. One officer radios in paramedics who rush to Max. They first check her pulse and their voices fade along with her sight as the adrenaline of Jefferson's reign being overthrown wears off and the final dose he'll ever give her takes over.

"I was just trying to help one of my favorite students," Jefferson says. "I found her drugged and bound here."

"We'll let the court decide that," an officer says.

"Try to stay awake, Miss. We'll get you out of here," one paramedic says.

She mumbles something intelligible and closes her eyes. She would fight, and try to obey the paramedic's orders, but she's so tired of fighting all this time that she willingly gives in to the sedative with the hope she'll wake far away from The Dark Room and Mr. Jefferson.


	4. Come Back for Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title comes from the song "Come Back for Me" by Jaymes Young, which I do not own.
> 
> Also, since this was written prior to BtS, Rachel's background and family life are inaccurate.

Max opens her eyes slowly, but this is the first time in forever that they don't feel unbearably heavy. She hears the steady bleeps of a heart monitor nearby, feels the pressure of the monitor's clip on her finger. Faint smells of cleaning products linger in the air.

"Don't you understand that this is important business?" a voice asks. Distant, not in the same room as Max, but she hears it clear enough that the man is nearby. She's heard the voice before, but can't quite place where.

"Don't _you_ understand that she's just been through hell? And you want to make her relive it? Do you even care about the people here?" Chloe retaliates. Wonderful, alive Chloe. Her voice is full of frustration, but Max has never been happier to hear it. "Give her a little time to adjust and talk to her later. He'll be rotting in prison anyway, so what does it matter if you have to wait a day or two?"

Whomever she's talking to must relent to her argument, Max hears footsteps fade away as another set grows closer. Chloe enters her little hospital room, reminiscent of the one in which she visited Kate. She pauses and stands still looking at Max, and Max watches her eyes widen and mouth form a little 'o', her I-wasn't-expecting-this face. She looks like a fish, and Max remembers telling her that again and again as children.

"Max, you're awake," Chloe says. She sits in a chair beside her bed. "So, uh, how do you feel?"

Max looks around her room before she answers. The TV mounted on the wall across from her bed quietly plays cartoons she watched with Chloe as a kid, and she wonders if Chloe turned that channel on for the nostalgia. The closet in the corner looks bare and as sad as the flower in the painting next to it. Even with the shades over the window to her right, sunlight seeps in and gives each surface in the room a peaceful glow. "I'm alive… and not _there_ ," she says.

Chloe puts her hand over Max's. "No one will ever be taken there again. Jefferson is going to rot in prison for this. And hopefully in Hell after the end of his miserable life."

The image of her former teacher and idol standing over her dominates her mind. He looked so pleased with himself, so enraptured by her. He tried finding the perfect angles from which to capture the current object of his perversion for eternity on film.

This angle highlights your innocent expression.

Flash.

Those eyes.

Flash.

You're my winner. I choose your portrait.

Flash.

"He deserves it. For what he's done to so many girls, and for killing Rachel."

Chloe sighs. "Yeah… I took her binder and gave it to the police. With everything going on, me sneaking into that bunker and taking something is the least of their concerns."

"What happens now?"

"They'll remove Rachel from the missing persons list, and they'll notify her family that her body has been recovered—it wasn't hard to find her in the junkyard since we dug her half up already. Then, that's the end of her story," Chloe says.

Max remembers Rachel hovering over her—the almost-tickle of her long, blonde hair and the ethereal glow of her bluejay earring. "Do you believe in ghosts, Chloe? Or, like, spirits?"

"It's hard not to in Arcadia Bay. You can almost feel that there's something spiritual here, you know? Like Tobanga." Chloe says. "Plus, I always wanted to believe that my dad might… you know, still be hanging around."

"I know this sounds crazy, but I saw Rachel's ghost one of the times I woke up," Max says. "She had a message for you. She wanted you to know that she made a mistake, but she never wanted to leave you and she's so sorry that she did."

"I'd like to believe that," Chloe says, her voice soft. "Like you said, it really did feel like her spirit was guiding us."

"You mentioned this before, but why do you think Rachel's family doesn't care that she went missing?"

Chloe shrugs. "Rachel was a foster kid. Born somewhere in California and bounced from house to house. She found out about Blackwell along the way and it seemed like the perfect deal. She gets to pursue a dream and her foster family gets to send her away."

"I'm sure they meant well in taking care of her," Max says.

"Maybe, but that happens in the system. The families want to help, but there are so many kids that they take in more than they realize they can handle and get overloaded. Then, it's a relief to have one less to keep track of. Well… that's how Rachel described it. 'The road to Hell is paved with good intentions' and all that."

"Hey, Max," Chloe says after a period of silence. "You know I'm here for you, right? Anything you want to talk about, I'll listen."

"I know. Thank you, Chloe…. This was the first timeline where you lived," Max says. "It was also the first where I was held by… Mr. Jefferson for so long without him trying to kill me. Rachel said it was part of keeping balance. I suffer so that others can live. That kind of deal. Sold my soul to the devil, I guess."

"I can't imagine what you went through just to save someone like me. I'm proud to call you my best friend, Max."

She tries to hide her blush from Chloe's compliment, so Max pokes at the IV needle in her arm, ready to be hooked to a drip but currently unconnected to one.

"You were really dehydrated when they got you," Chloe says. "So they did a few rounds of fluids through the IV."

"Oh," Max nonchalantly says. "You've been here the whole time?"

Chloe shrugs. "Of course I have. I mean, the chairs here really aren't that uncomfortable, and I was worried about you, Super Max."

"Sorry."

Chloe looks like she doesn't know what to say, and Max hates it. She hates that Chloe is looking at her with pity and feels like she needs to protect her. She doesn't want to be treated like she's about to break at any moment like a fragile porcelain doll. She doesn't want to believe that all of those might be true and more likely than she wishes.

"You have nothing to be sorry for, Max," she says. She gives her hand a squeeze.

It's all because of Jefferson. He intended to keep her until she slowly starved, but she survived. Now she's breaking and remembers more of The Dark Room than any of his other living victims. She's more fragile than Chloe knows, more than she suspects, but she wants everything to be just like it was before she was drugged the very first time.

Knowing that things will never be the same for her hurts the most. He wanted to capture the evolution of innocence into corruption, but some things can't be returned to innocence once corrupted.

She wishes that a hot shower and scrubbing her skin until its pink and raw would be enough to get rid of this feeling, but she knows otherwise. There is no cure, not even time.

"Earth to Max," Chloe says. "You're hella zoning right now. You okay?"

"That's… Chloe, I don't know how to answer that," Max says.

"Sorry, Max. I didn't mean to… I don't know what I'm supposed to say in this situation."

"I know. I don't either," Max says.

Chloe opens her mouth to say more, but a nurse walks in and she decides to be quiet.

"Miss Caulfield, you're awake," the nurse says. "I need to inform the doctor, so I'll be right back."

She brings back the doctor, an older woman with a kind face. The doctor nods at the nurse, who then leaves the room. "Hello, Maxine. I'm Dr. Hill. Would you mind if your friend stepped out of the room for a few minutes?"

Chloe stands up and gives Max's shoulder a squeeze with a small smile before she leaves. "Don't worry, Maximus. I'll go get some snacks or something. You must be starving."

Dr. Hill closes the door and takes the seat next to Max's bed that Chloe left. "I prefer 'Max'," she tells the doctor.

"Well, Max, you've been through quite the ordeal," she says. Her voice clinical and words to the point. "And you're lucky, even if you might not feel that way right now. You arrived heavily sedated with GHB, which is commonly known as a date rape drug. High doses can lead to serious health issues, including coma and death, but you seem to be recovering from it all right. We didn't find any physical evidence of sexual assault."

_At least that bastard didn't take advantage of me sexually_ , Max thinks. _I guess it really was just about the art to him._ It's a small comfort to hear Dr. Hill tell her that.

"We've been giving you a saline solution via IV for dehydration," she continues. "You might need another round or two, but otherwise just drinking plenty of water or sports drinks should be sufficient now that you're awake."

Dr. Hill fixes her glasses, pushing them back up the long bridge of her nose and looks up at Max from her clipboard. "And then there's the mental trauma associated with such… events," she says. "You may not be affected at all, but it's okay if you are. Most people would be, and you can get help for whatever it is you may feel. The human mind is an incredible thing, but it's also very delicate. For now, I'll leave you with some pamphlets, and will have you speak with a psychiatrist before being discharged. I can arrange for you to meet with one early tomorrow, or maybe even today if she finds a free spot in her schedule."

_The only other person who went through this that they know of is Kate, and she tried to jump off of a building. No wonder they want me to undergo a psych evaluation. I wonder how many of his other victims have already been contacted and reminded of an event they could never fully remember to build a case against a man they probably trusted. Just like me._

"When am I being discharged?"

"I'm keeping you here for 72 hour observation at the very least. After that, it depends on how well you're doing. I would like to see you gain a little weight before you leave, but I'm sure you will in time regardless."

Max rubs the hem of her blanket between her fingertips, finding comfort in the repetitive motion.

"Your parents are on their way here," Dr. Hill says. "We notified them when you were brought in last night."

"It'll be nice to see them," Max says. Her voice sounds hollow, but she wonders if it's only to her own ears. Her words sound more scripted than genuine. Even if it would be nice to see her parents after everything, she feels too numb to appreciate it.

Dr. Hill stands. "Well, I'll let you get back to visiting with your friend. I'll be seeing you plenty during your stay here. Just remember you have limitless amounts of support to help you through this difficult time, Max."

The way the doctor spoke annoys Max. How she was so careful to avoid mentioning more than necessary to protect her feelings. It's almost suffocating, all of this pity and walking on eggshells.

She hates Jefferson for giving her this attention and making her a victim. Her world is shattering and she can't hold it together on her own, but she never wanted anyone else to witness her breaking.

* * *

Ryan and Vanessa Caulfield are great parents, they always have been. Strict when need be, but never short on love for their only child: Max.

Her dad cradles a vase filled with colorful flowers while her mom holds a cluster of balloons with 'Get Well Soon!' plastered on them in metallic letters. They enter with quiet footsteps, almost tiptoeing. Even though Max is sitting up and staring straight at them, they act fearful of disturbing her. _Everything is probably still sinking in for them… It is for me,_ she thinks.

"You guys don't have to be so quiet," Max says. "I'm looking right at you; you aren't going to startle me."

Her words break the thin emotional shell they hide behind. Her mom's eyes are lined with tears and she drops the balloons in her rush to hug Max. "Max," she says, breathless. "We couldn't believe it when Principal Wells called and told us what happened. We didn't want to believe it."

_No one wants to think about this happening to their child. For the safety of someone so precious to be compromised… I'm not the only one hurting, but why does it still feel that way?_

Her dad places the vase on the little nightstand beside her bed. His one hand comes to rest on her mom's shoulder and the other rests on her own shoulder. "We're really glad that you're alive, Max," he says.

_What am I supposed to say? "Yeah, I'm also pretty glad that my psychotic teacher didn't murder me because of a random stroke of luck."_

She lets them hug her for as long as they want, it's the least she can do for worrying them so much. Her dad breaks off of their little group hug first. Eventually—which feels like forever but is more likely a handful of minutes—her mom calms herself enough to sit in a chair beside her dad. She pulls a tissue from her purse and dabs her eyes.

"We think you should come back to Seattle with us, Max," her dad says. Straight to the point, like always. "We can transfer you to a local high school and you can live safely at home."

"You can even do homeschooling if you want, or one of those newer online high schools," her mom offers. "I hear most colleges accept degrees from those online programs now."

"What about my friends here?" Max asks.

"You still have friends in Seattle, don't you?"

Max shrugs. "I haven't talked to them in awhile. It's difficult to keep in contact with friends you don't see often."

_I didn't contact Chloe for five years after moving, and she's my best friend. Why would I contact anyone in Seattle? What could we talk about beyond small talk?_

"Your mother and I just don't feel comfortable leaving you at Blackwell after all that's happened. A girl tried to kill herself and your photography teacher..."

"But I saved Kate," Max says. "She needs me here to help her through this. We're both hurting, but we're the only ones who can understand each other's pain."

_Chloe still needs me, too. And I need her to help me keep it together. Like she said, we're bonded for life now._

"Max, you could have _died_ ," her mom says, keeping a tissue close to her leaking eyes. "We almost lost you."

Max sighs. She doesn't have a response to her mom, what could she possibly say to soothe someone who almost had to bury their child?

The silence is less than comfortable, and her parents visiting sours her mood. Couldn't they wait until she recovered a bit before requesting something so big from her?

* * *

Warren comes to sit by Chloe in the hospital's cafeteria. "Visiting Kate?" she asks him.

He picks at the food, no better quality than what they serve Max and Kate. Although Max is being served nutritional shakes with two out of three meals to help her regain a little weight from her week of not eating, and those actually have more flavor. Or flavor in general.

"Yeah," he says. "I saw Max yesterday, but I know you'll take good care of her. Kate had Max last time, this time must be lonely without her."

"I can't believe she tried to kill herself again after being shown her binder, but I guess I can't blame her. Man, neither of them deserve this. I... can't imagine," she says.

Sure, Nathan tried to imitate Jefferson and took a picture or two of her. But she wasn't drugged as heavily or bound like Kate and Max had been. Nathan butchered the job usually done by Jefferson and she was able to get away before he could do much at all. Still, she'll never be able to forget the feeling in that moment.

At the same time, Nathan was never an idol to her or a person she respected. She tried to use him for money, but ended up used as practice by him. Max worshiped Jefferson's work, he was the entire reason she came back to Arcadia Bay. He was Kate's teacher and she said she helped him after class sometimes, so she must have had some degree of respect for him. And he betrayed both of them.

"I feel so lost. Kate, I see so much pain in her eyes. I know the police needed to show her the binder and question her for their case against Jefferson, but she would've been better off never knowing what really happened to her. Even if she doesn't remember it," Warren says. "And Max… I saw her yesterday. Her eyes look so haunted or, well, dead."

Warren's words drain her appetite. Two people who deserved to suffer the least are the ones suffering the most, and how are they supposed to help them? Warren's right. Kate's in horrible internal pain and Max looks dead on the inside.

"We're their best friends, right?" Chloe asks. Her voice cracks and she hopes Warren misses it. She might not be close to Kate, but she isn't heartless. Warren might not be as close to Max as she is—and never will be, she thinks—but Chloe knows she can't help Max on her own. She'll do anything to keep Max from breaking, or to pick up the pieces if she breaks, but she fears that her support alone isn't enough.

_I'm done making mistakes, Max. I'm done needing you to save me all the time. This time, I'll be saving you, Max._

"I know, but how much does that really count for now?" he asks. He doesn't sound angry or frustrated, but helpless and defeated. He lets out a drawn-out sigh and runs his hand through his hair.

Chloe shares in sighing and sets her plastic fork down on her tray, no longer hungry. "It counts for everything right now," she says.

Max said Rachel told her she needed to suffer for others to live, but Chloe wishes she didn't choose to save everyone. Why couldn't she be selfish for once and save herself?

_Because she's Max, the most talented and caring person you've ever met._

* * *

Max's room fills up quickly with flowers, balloons, and cards. Chloe stays with her most of the time, but even she has to leave to check in back home and go to family counseling with Joyce and David, something David finally agreed to try after seeing what his relationship with Chloe could be when they worked together searching for Max.

Chloe said she didn't look forward to it, but feels David deserves a chance.

Max's parents aren't pleased with her adamant desire to continue attending Blackwell Academy. They're staying in a nearby hotel for the weekend, but then they have jobs to return to Monday morning. And they expect to have Max in Seattle with them at that time, regardless of what she wants.

They mean well, but like Chloe told her earlier 'The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.' Her parents want her safe, and she understands that. But Seattle is not her safety blanket right now, it would be her personal Hell. She needs her friends at Blackwell by her side and the soothing spiritual energy of Arcadia Bay. She needs Chloe at her side with her unwavering loyalty, something she hates herself for not appreciating enough to keep in contact with her best friend for her five year absence.

She sighs and rubs small circles over her temples to quell the headache forming from her storm of thoughts. She doesn't mind being along in her room, welcomes the solitude at this point. The TV's background sound provides enough company, but she gets too much time to think and process everything that's happened. Too much time to go over the options thrown at her for her future.

Chloe brought some clothes for Max to wear instead of the hospital gown. Just an old t-shirt and shorts of hers, but they really made Max's day when she brought them. They even smell like Chloe's home, the most comforting thing at the moment. Memories of a place where she's always felt welcomed and loved.

Principal Wells ends up as her first visitor of her second day in the hospital. She doesn't remember much of the first day, when she slept off the lingering final dose from Jefferson in safety, other than Chloe sitting next to her and watching TV every time she woke up. He gives her the same sad look all of the nurses, doctors, and visitors have given her.

"Miss Caulfield," he says, "where do I even begin? We would be honored at Blackwell if you wished to return upon release from the hospital, but no one would fault you if you decided to attend a different school."

Max nods. "Blackwell is still my home," she says.

Principal Wells sighs and his shoulders drop a bit as he releases the tension in them. He pinches the bridge of his nose, right next to his tear ducts, the wear of recent events prematurely aging his features. "I'm glad to hear it, Max. Your grades might not be the best, but your photography is nothing to be overlooked. Due to circumstances, I'd like to let you know that you aren't alone at Blackwell. If you feel like you need a break or a moment to breathe, no one will hold it against you for leaving class to find a quiet space and gather your thoughts. The counselor is very aware of both your situation and Kate Marsh's. She's willing to meet with either of you at any time.

"And of course, I'd like to apologize for the actions of Mark Jefferson. Blackwell prides itself on creating a safe environment for all students, but one of our teachers was only there to create nightmares for those who didn't deserve it. I should have been more attentive to Kate's situation and Rachel Amber's. Even your own."

"He was sick," Max says, "but he hid it so well… I never suspected him."

"No one did, Max. But no one should have to suspect their teachers, or fear them."

Principal Wells shakes his head with a sigh. "I'm sorry to leave so soon, Max, but I need to visit Kate as well."

"Kate? She's here?"

"No one told you? After the police questioned her and showed her a binder of pictures, she tried to take her life again. It's lucky that one of her friends found her in time. Sorry, I thought you knew."

He leaves and Max sits dumbstruck. _Kate... Oh, Kate._

Maybe I'll test her faith again.

Flash.

She could have been my masterpiece.

Flash.

Sweet, innocent Kate.

Flash.

* * *

"Take all the time you need to answer, Miss Caulfield. I understand that these questions are going to be difficult," Officer Berry says. "What happened on October Tenth of this year? The last time you were seen is reported to be outside of Blackwell Academy during the End of the World Party hosted by Blackwell's Vortex Club."

_I rewound to a picture of Warren and me. Again._

"My friend, Warren, took a picture with me outside of the party. After a crazy week, he wanted to capture a happy moment."

_Chloe wanted to hunt down Nathan in the party for killing Rachel Amber, and probably gut him until he was unrecognizable. I've talked her out of it before, and she never noticed I was breaking more and more each time._

"I was going to go to the party with Chloe, but neither of us were really in a party mood."

"Where did you go then?"

_I begged Chloe to never go to The Dark Room alone, and she listened for once._

"I told Chloe to take me to my dorm."

_My consciousness skipped to the present of the new timeline I created and I woke up in The Dark Room… again._

"We split ways there and she went home."

_She was always shot by Jefferson when she was with me. I was his primary target, and I wanted her far away from me so she could live this time._

"I don't remember much after that… It was a long week and a lot happened, so my mind was pretty worn out."

_My body was on autopilot until I was already captured. The only memories I have of that are snippets that feel like they don't belong to me, like they happened to someone else and I watched from a distance._

"I just wanted to go to sleep. Mr. Jefferson must have found a way into my room while I slept and drugged me before taking me to The Dark Room."

Officer Berry flips to a new page in his notebook, kept in a nice leather casing. "What's the next thing you remember, Miss Caulfield?"

"'Max'," she corrects. "I… When I woke up, I was in The Dark Room. My wrists and ankles were tied with duct tape, but I couldn't move anyway because of the drugs. And he was preparing to give me another dose—Dr. Hill said it was GHB he used." Her words come out faster the more she talks, like if she doesn't say it all now, she never will. "And my phone was on the table and it vibrated with my text tone. So he stopped what he was doing and looked through my texts. He sent texts saying that I was alright to my friends because he wanted to avoid suspicion over my disappearance. Buy himself some time, I guess."

She stops to take a few deep breaths. "Then he drugged me again, and I fell back to sleep."

"You're doing great, Max," Officer Berry says. "David Madsen said he received a tip about The Dark Room, as you call it, but you weren't there when he investigated it. Do you know where you were at that time?"

"I was in that abandoned cabin by the lighthouse. I remember being jostled in a car, but I could hear the animals and the water."

"You're sure it was the lighthouse?"

"Yes."

"Were there any moments during your captivity that stuck out to you? Anything that Mark Jefferson said that stuck with you?"

_I could write a novel of things Jefferson said that will stick with me._ "Well," she starts, "he said he might test Kate's faith again when he was done with me. He said he and Rachel had a connection."

"Rachel Amber?"

"Yes."

Officer Berry continues to scribble in his notebook, but then he closes it and pulls out a red binder. "This is going to be hard to look at, Max, but your binder is unusual."

He puts the tray on wheels that the nurses put her meals on in front of her like a desk's top and sets the binder on it.

Max takes a deep breath before opening it to the first page. "What's unusual about it?" she asks. She's staring into the eyes of herself in the picture, red-rimmed and unaware, and she hates it. She hates Jefferson.

"Most of the binders only have about half of the pages filled. Yours is nearly full," he says. "Yours is also one of two where the background location does not always appear to be the same."

Pages later, she's lifeless by the lighthouse, something she always saw as a beacon of safety. She understands what he meant. He took pictures of Rachel in the junkyard and her by the lighthouse—the places they each saw as their own safe haven. Whether he somehow knew these little bits of information or not, she doesn't know.

"I don't know what you want me to say," Max says.

"Anything you think will help. You're the only one who has any memory of what happened when you were held in The Dark Room."

Max can't tear her eyes from the pages of her binder, the dozens of pictures she doesn't remember. The few she recalls with a foggy mind. "He's just… he's a sick, sick man."

"I know," Officer Berry says. "We're going to try to get him locked away for as long as we can. That man doesn't deserve to taste freedom ever again. Your answering these questions will help more than you can imagine. Speaking of, at any point did you encounter someone other than Mark Jefferson in The Dark Room?"

"Nathan Prescott. He would give me water and helped me survive."

Officer Berry nods. "He told us his whole story. It's how we found you. He needs help, but he's not a criminal."

* * *

She doesn't realize when Chloe comes back in the room, having been shooed while Wells, Officer Berry, and one of the hospital's psychiatrists talked to Max. At least, not until Chloe holds a cup of steaming hot chocolate under her nose and hands it to Max.

"Hot chocolate?" Max asks. It's the most she's said since talking with Officer Berry, and to be honest she can't remember much of the psychiatrist or even if Chloe was there between her many visitors coming for business matters.

Chloe plops onto the chair beside Max's bed. "The ultimate comfort drink," she says. She's smiling, but Max sees the sadness still lingering behind it. Sadness for her. "I brought some of the powdered shit and got one of the cafeteria ladies to make it."

People _will_ care when you die, Max.

Flash.

It's a shame you pissed your talent away.

Flash.

I do wish the circumstances had been different.

Flash.

She drinks a bit of the hot chocolate.

"Careful," Chloe says. "That should still be pretty hot. You'll burn your tongue."

It does burn her tongue, but that small pain is the first thing she's felt in so long. It's the first sensation to drive away part of the horrible numbness overtaking her. So she takes another drink, but Chloe grabs the cup from her and sets it aside by the flowers from her dad.

"Max, seriously. You're hurting yourself."

Max meets her eyes, worried and framed by fading blue hair. Chloe probably hasn't touched up its color since Nathan almost shot her in the bathroom, she thinks.

"Chloe," she says, but she's at a loss of what to say next. There's so much, but saying it makes it too real.

"Talk to me, Max."

She shakes her head. "I saw my binder, Chloe," she says. "The cop showed it to me, Officer Berry. He likes to hang out at the diner in the mornings, remember? Asked questions about everything." Her voice shakes more with each word.

"Max..." Chloe slouches in her chair, staring at her hands folded so tight her knuckles are white. Her eyebrows slant like she's frustrated. Or angry, or worried. Any combination of feelings, but none of them positive.

Max looks at the cup of hot chocolate steaming on the stand by her bed. Chloe wants to help, but she's only repaying her with pain and worry. Guilt stabs through her numbness. She's saved everyone, but she's the one causing them pain now. She can hide it. Suffer alone and let everyone live happily in the timeline she's created.

She puts a smile on her face. Small, but better than nothing. "It's okay, Chloe," she says. "I just… need time."

Chloe looks up, her expression lightening, but still not happy. More hesitant. "You're a human time machine, Max. You can have all the time you need."

She keeps her smile up, and Chloe even returns it, but she can't help but think that time might not be able to heal _all_ wounds.

* * *

They asked Kate to come to the police station the morning after Max was found alive. She regrets obliging to their request, but how could she expect to be shown a binder of pictures she doesn't remember being taken?

Her golden cross necklace—a precious gift from her First Communion—lays abandoned on her bible, closed on top of her dresser. She rips a piece of paper from her notebook and grabs one of her colored pencils. 'Sorry' is the first word she scribbles among the rapidly appearing tear marks. The rest of her note is generic. 'It's not your fault, it was _his_.' 'It's for the best.' 'I was trapped in a nightmare, and this is the only way I could wake up.'

Using the term loosely, her note satisfies her. It's not perfect, but there aren't words to accurately describe what she needs to say. She lays it on her bible under the cross of her beloved necklace.

She sits on her bed, legs stretched out in front of her, and smooths her skirt and blouse. If nothing else, she'll keep that bit of dignity.

With an orange bottle in her hands, she says, "Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned."

These pills were meant to help her, and now they finally will. She pops one onto the palm of her shaking hand and raises it to her lips. As if there's an invisible wall between her hand and mouth, she stops inches away and can't move the pill closer.

"The serpent deceived me, and I fell into his trap."

The first pill is the most difficult, but she manages to pop it in her mouth and swallow it with a sip of water.

"Innocent, without innocence."

Another pill.

"Forgive me, Father, for cleansing this tainted body in the only way I know how."

Two more pills, each easier to swallow than the last. Her hands shake more with each one and her tears spill down her face, onto the comforter of her bed. She should've played her violin one last time, she thinks. The way the strings sang each note calmed her when she played.

Useless thoughts she tries to drown with another batch of pills.

She feels the pills in her stomach, sitting like a rock. She feels the path they took down her esophagus, like they're trapped and close to choking her. Maybe it's her imagination, but everything feels too real. Because they've dominated her mind since she was at the police station, she doesn't want her last memories to be of pictures starring her barely conscious body.

She lays back on her bed and thinks of her father, to whom she was always a light in the dark. When she felt down at home, her sisters brought joy to her with their bright smiles and kind actions. Lynn gave her a fistful of flowers from their mom's garden with dirt still attached to their roots once when Kate cried after a rough day years ago. The memory is enough to bring a smile to Kate's face.

"I love all of you," she whispers.

Despite some bullies, she'll miss everyone at Blackwell, too. Max, her angel. Poor Max has to go through so much, just like her. She's the only one who would be able to begin to understand Kate's pain, and Kate hopes Max is stronger than she is and can survive through this nightmare they share. Warren, also so kind to her and so helpful. Even Victoria and Nathan showed kindness to her when she needed it the most.

She closes her eyes after a final glance at the empty orange bottle in her hand, wondering if this might have been a mistake. It all derived from her mistake of going to the Vortex Club and taking one sip of red wine, an action not unusual to her from church-going.

Viral slut.

Sinner.

Hypocrite.

It's time to put an end to the voices who added to her torment without knowing, or caring about, her full story. At least, she thinks, she doesn't have to stare down at the pavement waiting to feel that final impact.


	5. I Can't Swim

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title is from the song "I Can't Swim" by Elliot Moss, which I don't own. I'm also not a medical professional.

Max wakes with a restlessness on Saturday morning. 8AM, spells the analog clock. This evening will make it 72 hours since she was admitted. While she hopes that Dr. Hill will return and let her know she's allowed to leave, not remembering actually speaking with the psychiatrist gives her a sinking feeling she'll be staying longer than she'd like. If only Officer Berry talked to her after her evaluation, then she wouldn't have been thinking of that wretched binder throughout her evaluation.

Some officer. She understands wanting to build a case airtight enough to trap Jefferson for the rest of his miserable life, but his timing was terrible. In Kate's case as well.

Chloe isn't next to her when she wakes up, but Max checks her phone to find a text from her.

Chloe: Had to go do some bidness. Not telling what, it's a surprise

Max: Everything involving you is a surprise, Chloe

She puts her phone to the side. It's still early, so she doesn't expect her parents to come visit for a few more hours. Not that she looks forward to their company, with their insistence for her to return to Seattle with them.

_Maybe if Dr. Hill doesn't approve my discharge early enough, I'll have an excuse to stay in Arcadia Bay a little longer that they can't dispute._

She leaves her room for the first time since her admittance, bare feet slapping against the cold tiled floor. When a nurse sees her, she rushes over.

"Max, what are you doing?" she asks.

"I was hoping I could visit Kate if she's still here," Max says. "Uh, Kate Marsh."

The nurse gives Max a small smile. "I don't see why not, but make sure you don't decide to wander again without speaking to one of us first and letting us know. We need to keep track of our patients."

She points Max towards Kate's room and sends her off. She finds it odd to be allowed to roam, but never actually questioned the floor on which she was placed. If Kate's on the same floor, was she placed in the psychiatric unit?

Max knocks on the door, not fully closed, three times. Just like she did in the Blackwell dorms.

"Who is it?" asks Kate. She sounds drained. Tired.

Max opens the door a little more, enough for Kate to see her face. "Kate?"

Kate's face lights up when she sees Max and she stands. Max meets her halfway for a hug, tight and exactly what they both needed. "I'm so glad to see you, Max," she says. "I almost made a horrible mistake."

"It's okay, Kate. I'm here now."

Kate pulls away from their hug and drags Max over to the chairs, where they sit across from each other just like the first time Max visited her in the hospital.

"You're looking much better, Max," Kate says.

Max shakes her head. "Much better? Kate this is the first time I've seen you since..."

Kate nose wrinkles in her confusion. "What? Max, what day do you think it is?"

"It's Saturday. Tonight will be 72 hours since I was admitted, at which point I might be discharged."

Kate's eyes widen only for a moment before a flash of understanding, and sadness takes over her expression. "Max, it's Sunday."

"That can't be right, Kate. This is my third day here." Max reaches to where she would have her phone, if she hadn't left it in her room.

Kate grabs the remote and turns her TV on, changing the channel to the weather channel, where the date is always plastered on the bottom right of the screen. 20 October 2013, ten days since the End of the World party. And a Sunday.

"What? Kate, I don't understand."

Max meets Kate's eyes, which she finds dull, but also carrying hints of worry. Worry for her. Kate reaches out and holds one of Max's hands between both of her own. "I saw you Thursday morning, on my way to the police station. You weren't responding to me… or anything really. You just stared straight ahead, and I'm sure that it wasn't the wall of the hospital you saw. You were looking at something far more sinister. It was clear in your eyes, no matter how distant they were. But I understood, because I saw it too."

"Why don't I remember?"

_Sorry, I thought you knew._

Of course, Principal Wells thought she knew Kate was there. By the time he saw her, Kate had been there for a day. She _should_ have known, and likely was told, but she didn't remember it.

Max feels the sting of tears forming behind her eyes, and wonders how Kate is being so strong right now. Kate, who's been through so much, still finds it in her to be a rock for someone who needs her at that moment. Back when Max visited her, she was wrong. Max isn't her angel, because she never needed one. All she needed was someone to unfurl her wings for her: the true angel.

"You'll have to ask the doctor," Kate says. "I had to leave to meet… to meet my own demons. Chloe might know, though. She was by your side the entire time."

"Why didn't Dr. Hill say anything to me?"

Kate strokes the top of Max's hand. "Max… Dr. Hill doesn't work in this unit."

"What?"

Every time she thinks the world makes sense, someone pulls logic out from under her and Max is left dazed and wondering if this is the price of playing with time. The more Kate explains to her, the more her head hurts. She hopes, at the very least, her nose won't start bleeding. She hasn't even used her rewind since her rescue.

"You were transferred to this unit yesterday, Warren told me that and I stopped in your room for a few minutes. You… didn't really respond to anything again," Kate says. "Seeing you like that, I realized I need to find my strength because I'm not the only one suffering. Twice, I tried to end something because I couldn't appreciate the light in my shroud of darkness. But never again. I know that God will give me the courage to face each day, and I'll use that courage to help others."

_Never change, Kate,_ Max thinks. _Even in the worst times, you find optimism and a reason to see the good in life. I think there's a lot I could learn from you, but I need to learn my own story first._

"Kate… I'm sorry. I came to check on you, not talk about myself."

Kate shrugs. "I don't mind, Max. I've received a lot of support these past few days, and I think I can make it through this because of that. I'll never be perfect, but I'll make peace with this in my own time."

"Are we still having that tea date when we're both released?" Max asks. She's had enough of talking about The Dark Room's destruction of them and about a series of events she can't remember.

"You can count on that, Max," Kate says. "After these past two weeks, we both deserve a break."

Max laughs under her breath. "You can say that again, Kate. You can definitely say that again."

Max leaves Kate's room, moving the door until it's barely closed, just like when she entered. While she shakes her head, she feels the now-familiar guilt bloom in her stomach. She's glad to see Kate with some spirit in her, even with the sadness and pain hidden deep in her wide hazel eyes. But she went to comfort Kate for having to endure horror she never deserved, not be comforted for the same reason.

_Who am I kidding? I deserved everything for messing with time, but at least I kept Chloe alive._

* * *

She was transferred to Dr. Hawthorne yesterday, which she doesn't remember, but learns when he comes to speak with her. With his square face, greying hair, and thick-rim glasses magnifying his steel blue eyes, she feels she would remember speaking with him. Or even seeing him. But he's like a stranger to her, a face with which she's never crossed paths.

He sits with his clipboard on his crossed legs. His tone is soft, but firm.

"I'm missing an entire day," Max says. "I don't remember being transferred to the psychiatric unit at all."

Dr. Hawthorne clears his throat, but it does little to take the rasp from his voice. "You were given benzodiazepines to help bring you out of a catatonic state on Thursday morning, and again yesterday after that officer came to speak with you. One of the side-effects is anterograde amnesia. You were likely informed that you were given this treatment, but the side-effects made you unable to remember it. Dr. Hill asked me to evaluated you after it happened the first time. Once I saw that you returned to the catatonic state after being exposed to traumatic stimuli, I administered another dose and Dr. Hill transferred your case to me. That happened yesterday."

"So, I'm not being released after a 72 hour observation period like Dr. Hill hoped?" Max asks. She already knows the answer in her heart.

"I'm afraid not," he says. "I'd like to see you go 48 hours without falling back into a catatonic state before I authorize your discharge."

He holds his hand up when Max opens her mouth to speak. "I don't want you to rush something like this, and I want you to know that this sort of response isn't uncommon after traumatic events. There is, however, the possibility of it developing into Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD. Some research suggests that counseling can decrease your risk of developing PTSD. That might be something you want to think about."

She repeats his words in her head. PTSD is something soldiers who went to war got, not high school girls.

_You know that's a stereotype,_ she tells herself. _Anyone could develop PTSD after a traumatic event, and you can't pretend that dealing with The Dark Room doesn't fit that criteria. It's nothing to be ashamed of._

"I'll consider counseling," Max says.

_Don't be ashamed._

"That's all I ask," Dr. Hawthorne says. "It's for your own benefit."

"Right."

Dr. Hawthorne expresses his wish to see her discharged soon so she can get back to her life before he leaves, but Max barely listens as she thinks about the hours she missed because of a medication she doesn't remember receiving.

* * *

Seeing Chloe walk into her room sends Max into motion. She goes up to Chloe and grips both arms, making Chloe stand straight like a board.

"Uh hey, Max," Chloe says. "You okay?"

"Chloe, it's Sunday."

"Yeah… It's Sunday."

"When you came into my room on Friday, you were surprised that I was awake. Was that the first time you saw me awake since I was admitted?" Max flicks her gaze between Chloe's eyes, focusing on either one for no more than a handful of seconds.

"No, you were awake on Thursday. But only if you count having your eyes open as awake, like the doctors did," she says. She puts her own hands on Max's arms, keeping Max steady while she panics. "Whatever you were on Thursday, I doubt 'conscious' would be in the description. You just sat there and stared forwards. It was hella creepy… and scary. No one could break you out of it, so the doctors gave you something and you fell asleep."

"Okay, what about yesterday?"

Chloe sighs. She's talks in a quiet voice. "After you spoke with the cop, you fell back into that zombie-mode again. I came to visit you, but you just sat and stared again. The psychiatrist shooed me out like most of your visitors, and then I learned that they moved you to the psychiatric unit. You slept for awhile again, so I went to get you hot chocolate. I thought it might wake you up and give you a little comfort."

Max lets her arms fall limp to her sides and the life drains out of her. No spark of light lives in her eyes, no color graces her face.

Chloe wraps her into a hug. "Hey, Max," she says. "Don't go back into zombie-mode on me."

"I'm not going zombie-mode, Chloe. I just… I lost what? A day and a half? I thought I understood everything going on, but I still don't have the grasp on reality that I need. Aren't enough sections of my memory missing from The Dark Room?"

"Max, something crazy happened to you that doesn't happen to most people," Chloe says. Max vaguely wonders when she became the rational one.

"Kate is handling everything fairly well," Max says.

"Max," Chloe says. "Kate tried to kill herself, and now she's probably too doped up to realize there's anything wrong with the world."

Max buries her face in Chloe's shoulder. "I don't think that's true. She hasn't made peace with it, but she already plans to in time."

"She can pretend it's a dream, Max. She doesn't remember any of it and never would have if the police didn't question her. Why does it even matter?" Chloe asks. "Why is it bothering you so much that you might need a bit of support?"

She's not trying to be aggressive, her tone doesn't betray any malice towards Max and her behavior. It's frustration. Raw frustration that gives a bite to her words in an all-Chloe way, fitting for someone who wears their heart on their sleeve.

"I wanted Blackwell to be different," Max says. "I didn't want to be the shy, cliché geek. I didn't want any label at all. Couldn't I just be Max Caulfield? Now, I'm going to be seen as a victim. 'That girl who was kidnapped by that one teacher.' I already see everyone looking at me with those sad, pitying eyes."

"You are still Max Caulfield, but you _are_ a victim too. You don't want to admit it. You don't want to even think about it right now, I get that. But you won't be able to run from it forever." Chloe breaks the hug and puts her hands on Max's shoulders, giving her a small shake back and forth. "Take it from me, Max. You know I tried to run from my dad's death. I wanted to hate David, and blame my mom. But I knew, somewhere deep inside, that all of that was irrational. Bad things just happen sometimes."

Max keeps her head down, unwilling to let Chloe see the tears spilling over onto her cheeks. She sees Chloe's bullet necklace hanging down, even through the veil of her messy hair. In the first timeline, that same necklace sat on the deck in The Dark Room, a sort of sick trophy Jefferson chose to claim.

"You were the one who brought me to my senses, Max," Chloe says. "After all those years, when I saw you again, you actually had goals and a future planned. I was just thinking about surviving another day at home. And you reminded me that maybe there's something worthwhile that I could do with my life, something more than driving all day and smoking in my room. That's why I talked to Principal Wells."

"About what?" Max asks, her voice strained and no more than a whisper.

"About being a student at Blackwell again. He actually decided to give me a second chance, but it's going to be a lot of work to fix everything I royally fucked up."

Max meets Chloe's eyes, no longer caring about the visible marks of her pathetic state. "Are you cereal right now?"

Chloe smirks and pats Max's head. "Not only am I cereal," she says, "I'm also milk."

* * *

Max pokes at her lunch with the provided plastic spork—because forks are too dangerous for psych patients. She rolls her eyes. She understands it, but that doesn't require her to like the rule. Even with Chloe delivering good news to her, she finds it difficult to be excited. What kind of person isn't excited to be classmates with their best friend?

"I'm surprised Warren hasn't visited," Max says, shifting balls of watermelon from one side of her plate to the other.

She only looks away from her meal when she hears Chloe's sharp inhale turn into a coughing fit. Chloe pounds on her own chest a few times until she can take a deep breath. It's a small justice since she took Max's jell-o cup and squeezed globs of gelatin straight from their container without a spoon like a savage.

It's not surprise that sent her into a fit, Max sees once she settles, it was amusement. Chloe tries to conceal her grin, but it breaks through regardless.

"You don't remember?" Chloe asks. "Warren did visit you… on Thursday."

"I don't remember anything about Thursday."

"Blackwell Bro denied again."

"Chloe," Max chides. "C'mon, he's nice."

Chloe shrugs. "Yeah, he pulled through when you were in trouble. I'll give him credit for that," she says. "He visited you on Thursday, but he visits Kate a lot. He said that last time she had you, but this time she doesn't. So he wanted to keep her company."

"Kate could use a Warren. Even though I never saw him the way he wanted, he remained a good friend and respected my feelings. He can be a rock for her, something solid to steady her while her world spins."

"What about you?" Chloe asks.

"I have a Chloe. I've always had a Chloe."

"Bonded for life, right?" she asks.

"Bonded for life," Max confirms.

In the silence that follows their simple promise to each other, Max's mind blanks. Every time she blinks, the flash of the fluorescent lights returning to view sends her back into The Dark Room in front of camera flashes.

Victoria would kill to be in your place right now.

Flash.

I'm sorry that I—that Nathan killed your friend.

Flash.

Rachel was always looking in the wrong places.

Flash.

"Max?" Chloe asks. She pulls her back into reality.

And she does every time Max starts to fade away.

Max's parents say their farewell in mid-morning. They have work tomorrow and a long drive ahead of them. They're glad Max is more responsive and looking better, and they make her promise to text and call often. Max's delayed release means that she gets to stay in Arcadia Bay for at least a little while longer, but her parents promise they'll be back to collect her after her release. Next weekend. Maybe the weekend after.

"I can't believe they want you to go back to Seattle," Chloe says after they walk out of the room and their footsteps fade down the hall. "I mean, I can believe it, but… well, you know."

"Yeah, I know what you mean," Max says. "Honestly, I don't plan on going back to Seattle. I _want_ to stay here and keep going to Blackwell."

"How are you going to convince them? They sounded hella set on you leaving."

"I'll show them I'm okay."

Chloe crosses her arms and narrows her eyes at Max. "And are you okay, Max?"

She doesn't answer.

Flash.


	6. Going Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I do not own Life is Strange or the song "Going Home" by Asgeir. Do not expect this story to be perfect. There will be inaccuracies as I am only human.

She's released on Monday morning, hesitantly, by Dr. Hawthorne. While he doesn't seem fully comfortable approving her discharge, she knows that he has no reason to keep her there longer. Max refused to give him more reasons. So with Chloe's help to keep her grounded close to reality, she made it 48 hours without slipping back into her catatonic state.

A nurse has to use a proxy card to let her out, the psychiatric ward's doors are locked to prevent runaways who aren't in their right state of mind. No wonder they didn't overly mind her wandering the other day, she wouldn't have been able to leave if she wanted to. The nurse wishes Max well, and Max returns the sentiment, but she's far too happy to leave that she doesn't want to stop and make small talk with anyone.

Being trapped in a plain, white room isn't something she wants right now. It won't help her, no matter how much effort the medical staff puts in.

Then, she's on the main floor and swinging open the doors. She takes a breath deep enough to make her lungs hurt, trying to stuff them with as much fresh air as possible. Smelling the crisp fall air with faint hints of someone burning wood in the distance heals her soul more than anything a doctor could have done. Unfortunately, her clothes still reek of the overly clean hospital scent. Chloe promised to bring her some of Rachel's clothes to wear when she was released, but forgot. So, Max is stuck wearing the same outfit she was admitted in.

Maybe some people would hold ill feelings towards the outfit that they wore during a traumatic experience, but Max doesn't care much about the superstition that it's the clothes that might be unlucky. Not with the role she played in the events leading up to her stay in The Dark Room.

The clothes are definitely not the ones responsible.

_It's not like Jefferson is going to escape police custody and find me just because I happen to be wearing these jeans with this shirt._

She rolls her eyes at no one as she walks to the bus stop, reaching for her ear buds only to realize she doesn't have them with her. At least she has her bus pass.

A hint of doubt colors her mind. She knows there's no reason that her clothes would affect Jefferson's fate, but could something else intervene and save him, therefore dooming her? _What if Jefferson does get released? What if there's some loophole or the Prescott's hire the best team of lawyers for him_ _just_ _to save their own name?_

The ride back to Blackwell is unusually quiet without her music, but she looks out of the window and lets her mind become comfortably blank, forgetting the what-ifs for now. _Not catatonic, just peacefully clear of thought._

Her second comfort comes in the form of anonymity. No one on the bus gives her the pitying look to which she's now accustomed. In fact, none of the other passengers spare more than a glance at her at all. She doesn't know their names, and they don't know hers.

She wonders why she ever wanted to stop being the shy, cliché geek in the first place.

_I guess once you're connected with a certain event, especially one like being Jefferson's victim, being known isn't worth every look bringing back a bad memory. It's like a nightmare that just won't leave you be._

" _I'm stuck in a nightmare, and I can't wake up."_

She understands Kate's words on the roof now more than ever. She relates to them now. Kate doesn't even remember much of what happened, but she knows her nightmare in more detail than ever because of a binder that just happened to have her name written on it in tall, careful letters.

Max had a bond with Kate since the beginning of the school year, when they were paired up for a group assignment in Jefferson's class and learned that they got along pretty well. Since then, Max always looked forward to their tea dates. A time where they could just relax after a stressful day of classes. But she never wanted that bond to be strengthened by something like this. Just like she chose to suffer in order for Chloe and the others to live, she'd choose to be more distant from Kate if it meant sparing her from horrors she never deserved.

She considers, for a moment, trying to go back in time farther and finding a way for Jefferson to take her first. There was that group photo of their class from September that she could use. Maybe then Kate would be spared. She shakes her head and tries to squash the thought. Using her power for something like that, she can't predict what she could end up changing. Hell, remember what happened when she tried to keep William alive? Chloe asked to be euthanize. And she complied with that final request.

Never again.

Max flexes her right hand. Since her rescue from The Dark Room, she hasn't used her power. Not once. She also hasn't had a nosebleed, but she's certainly had raging headaches.

_Will those effects ever fade, or is there something irreversibly wrong with me? What about all of the timelines that I changed drastically? Are there still Maxes wandering around in them without a happy ending in sight? How many Maxes have to bury a Chloe because of my selfishness?_

She's glad when the bus pulls up to Blackwell. Focusing on walking sounds a lot better to her than thinking of the consequences to all of her actions. One of her Maxes _killed_ Chloe with morphine. That one had to be in jail by now, Chloe's parents knew that no one else was in the house at that time. There wasn't even any proof that Chloe wanted to die. She had no will saved. Not even a voice recording affirming that her final wish was for Max to end it all for her.

Max walks straight to the dorms, ignoring the curious and questioning stares of students who don't have a class right now. They give her plenty of space as she walks by and don't say anything to her—whether it's due to shock or courtesy, she doesn't know. But she doesn't care either. She's grateful for it because she's not sure she can handle dealing with other students yet. They're going to have too many questions that she can't answer. Besides, what if their questions set her into another catatonic state? Would she have to go back to the hospital? Would she ever be released from that vicious loop set in motion by a man she used to admire?

The series of questions running through her mind makes her pick up her pace, anxious to avoid everyone else just in case they say the wrong thing and get her sent back to the psychiatric ward.

She passes by Tobanga on her way, feeling its stare upon her. A glance is all she gives it in return, but she sees Rachel's blue feather earring hanging from it near the top. When she blinks, it's gone again.

The floor with her dorm is quiet, most of the girls are in class now. She does, however, hear Kate playing her violin as the sweet notes fill the hall. _Guess she's giving herself a little break. She deserves one._

Max stops in front of her door and digs out her keys from her satchel, but she freezes after she puts the key in her lock. Her autopilot memories of being captured flood her mind. Waking up to a prick in her neck and seeing a blurry image of Jefferson standing over her with a smirk of victory.

A chill runs up her spine and she opens the door only to quickly shut and lock it behind her. _I can't be afraid of my own room. But he did get passed its lock once before… Maybe David could replace the lock?_

She goes to change, but grabs a set of clothes as a little bundle along with her shower supplies. A nice, hot shower is exactly what she needs right now. And with everyone in class—excluding Kate with her violin—she'll have the shower room to herself.

* * *

Tuesday comes too quickly and she's not ready to face the world yet. So she hides away in her room, strumming her guitar because it lets her stop thinking. Kate's across the hall with her violin again, seemingly lacking the courage alongside Max to rejoin the routine of school. Max knows she can't hide forever, and suspects Kate knows that as well, but she can still hide for today.

Chloe texts her to ask if she wants company once she realizes Max isn't in her classes, but Max turns her down by reminding her she's lucky to have been given a second chance and can't afford to waste it. Max promises that she's all right, she just needs a little time to herself.

Maybe if she says it enough times, she'll believe it herself.

Time heals all wounds.

Just need a little time.

More time will allow her to process things.

The time will come when she has to face her demons, but for now it's much easier to just roll over on her bed, pull the blankets above her head, and close her eyes hoping for a sleep without nightmares.

Warren texts her asking if she wants to borrow his flash drive of movies again as a pick-me-up. She starts typing out a refusal, but stops and reconsiders his offer. Movies can be distracting and are also great when you want to pass a few hours, but make it feel like less than a single hour. A way to escape reality for a little bit.

So she rewrites her response saying she'll be glad to have his movie flash drive for a while again. He tells her Chloe offered to take it since she plans on visiting after class anyway.

Max: Thanks, Warren. I really appreciate this

Warren: Yeah, no worries Maximus. Just let me know if there's anything else I can do to help you.

It's not that she doesn't want Warren to drop off the flash drive himself and visit—his single visit is one that she doesn't even remember—but she looks forward to seeing Chloe again. The world always feels a little more normal, a little more right, when Chloe is next to her.

She was napping when Warren's text caused her phone's screen to flash and wake her. She panicked for only a second until the familiar scenery of her room came into view. Now, she's no longer tired and her heart is still calming from it's sudden racing in fear.

She doesn't want to play more guitar, she's played it enough these past two days. She stretches and pulls herself out of bed. Since she hasn't written in her journal for awhile, that's she decides on doing. If only to document a correction of her views of Jefferson. She remembers writing only praise for him. How much she looks up to him. How much she respects him.

But those sentiments no longer have a place in her heart or mind, so she'll write out a new passage about the true Jefferson. Maybe not what he did exactly, not yet. Just enough to ease the feeling of desperation pushing this thought to the forefront of her mind. The urgency yelling at her that this task is important.

She left it in her satchel. But when she goes to grab it, she can't find it. It's not a small journal—fairly average in size, in fact—so it shouldn't be difficult to spot at all. Which causes her to ask aloud, "What the fuck?"

She flips her satchel upside down and lets its contents fall to the ground. When ashes sprinkle out in globs, then in a flood, she understands.

At the same time, she doesn't understand.

In one timeline, Jefferson burnt her journal because she ruined his photos by kicking his rolling tray. However, in this timeline, she left The Dark Room with her journal completely intact. She never had the opportunity to so much as move while captive this time around, so there was no way for her to ruin his photos and lead him to destroying her journal in anger.

Then why is she staring at a pile of ashes on her floor with no journal to be found?

She can't come up with an answer, because she doesn't know where to begin figuring out the problem. Math and science were never her subjects anyway. _Words problems, ugh._

Chloe, on the other hand, loves science. She stopped trying somewhere along the way after Max left, but that didn't mean she no longer likes her old favorite subject. It was likely just part of her rebellion against the structure of her life. Chloe will also be visiting her later, so Max hopes she'll be able to get some answers.

Even a theory. A hypothesis. She'll take anything she can get right now that will help her sort this out.

Chloe can't arrive soon enough. Something about the pile of ashes keeps drawing Max's attention and leaves her feeling uneasy, almost lightheaded.

There's nothing more innocent than a teenage girl's journal.

Flash.

_Crash_. You bitch!

Flash.

Maybe another dose will calm you down.

Flash.

* * *

_She's tied to a chair, but manages to detach her foot. Victoria is asleep beside her, peacefully unaware of her surroundings. Panic quickens Max's breathing as she pulls a nearby cart closer. It has a pack of syringes and a vial or two. A few of the syringes are missing from the pack, and she can guess what they were used for._

_Photos are scattered on the top tray. Photos of her that she doesn't remember being taken, all surrounding a red binder with her name written on its side. She glances at each one to find something she can focus on and travel back to, but the only one she has a clear view of is the picture of Rachel laying in the junkyard, already dead. Max knows this picture doesn't belong, but can't figure out why until she notices the person in the picture with Rachel._

_She's posed with Rachel in the picture, her head resting on Rachel's stomach. They're exceptionally pale, even for a black and white photo, and limp. Already dead._

"Max?" Chloe asks. She's knocking at the door. "You in there?"

Max rubs her eyes, safe in her room on the edge of her bed. She gets up and opens the door as Chloe is in the middle of knocking.

"Thanks for making me stand out here like an idiot," she says.

"Sorry, I guess I fell asleep," Max says, despite that experience feeling closer to reality than a nightmare.

Chloe shrugs and holds out Warren's flash drive with a triumphant grin. "Whatevs. How about a movie?"

Max rolls her eyes and grabs the flash drive. "Thanks, Chloe. And yeah, we'll watch a movie in a second. Just look at this first."

She points to the ashes and Chloe squats to look at them. "So...there are some ashes here," Chloe says. "What? Did you take up smoking without telling me?"

"This was my journal, Chloe. I left The Dark Room with everything in that satchel intact and the only things I've removed are my phone and bus pass. So, why is my journal suddenly a pile of ashes?" she asks.

Chloe sits on the ground and crosses her legs, taking renewed interest in the situation. "That's a good question, Max. But that's still not very much to go off of."

"Here's the other thing," Max says. "In one of the timelines that I changed, Jefferson _did_ burn my journal and it looked exactly like this. I kicked a cart and ruined the pictures on it because something spilled—a vial of the GHB, I think. It made him so angry that he dosed me again. Then, he must have burned it while I was unconscious because it was ashes on the cart the next time I woke up. But in this timeline, none of that happened."

Chloe looks at the ashes in silence for a few minutes, pushing them around with the tips of her fingers like the answers she wants are hidden within the pile. "Have you ever heard of the Mandela Effect, Max?" she finally asks.

Max shakes her head. "No. Care to explain it, Einstein?"

Chloe chuckles. "It's basically the idea that people can collectively have memories from another timeline running parallel to our own and the timelines are so similar, that they slip across into a new timeline where their memories don't line up with the events of reality. Just small differences that no one notices until it comes up in conversation. Things like people swearing they watched the funeral of someone famous on TV, but then they find out that famous person is still alive. The weirdest part is that a lot of times, more than one person will swear that the same piece of false information is true and they remember it so well."

"So you think this is like the Mandela Effect?" Max asks.

"I don't know. Maybe." Chloe shrugs. "It's just the closest thing that I've heard of to this. Except, instead of memories, your belongings are swapping with the identical version of themselves in other, parallel timelines. Or something like that."

"That's crazy, Chloe," Max says. "But so is everything else that's happened this month."

"Is it really that crazy, Max?" Chloe asks. "I mean you've traveled through timelines that are different to this one, where things that have happened here haven't happened here. You're like a walking Mandela Effect. You've physically slipped through alternate timelines, but on purpose instead of accidentally. You knew when you slipped between them, because it would happen after you changed something. I guess something else has happened somewhere along the way, and now your belongings are swapping through timelines. You get ashes. Another you gets an intact journal with your writing."

Max sits on her bed. Chloe's words make sense, but she still has trouble wrapping her head around the concept. Chaos Theory. The Butterfly Effect. Now, the Mandela Effect. _What other time-related effects am I unaware of? I thought I did my research thoroughly, but I guess I focused on the wrong aspects: how someone can time travel. Not what happens when they do._

"How do you know about these effects and theories?" she asks.

Chloe shrugs. "Hey, once I learned you could control time, I did my research, too. It's not like I was going to school or had a job, so I had plenty of time to kill while you were at school and having your Blackwell adventures."

Chloe stands and stretches. "So, movie?" she asks with a grin.

* * *

During the second or third movie—Max wasn't paying enough attention to keep count with the amount of information she needed to sort through in her mind—Chloe falls asleep on the futon. Max gets up and throws a blanket over her. Her left leg sticks out, but Max leaves it like that. Chloe was never known to be a peaceful sleeper anyway. More like a sleep thrasher, and Max had been the victim of her dream fights more than enough times to attest to it.

It's dark out and her clock tells her how it's the middle of the night, but she has a feeling that she needs to go across the hall to Kate's room. Not out of urgency, she doesn't feel that anything's happened to Kate, but out of a weighing solemnity on her heart. A certain hollowness she can't explain.

She knocks three times, lightly, on Kate's door, and isn't surprised when it opens.

"Max?" Kate asks. "Are you alright?"

"Did I wake you?"

Kate shakes her head. "No, I was awake anyway. I slept during the day and, well, I guess I slept a little too long during the day. Now, I'm wide awake in the middle of the night." She steps aside. "Would you like to come in?"

Max accepts and enters Kate's dorm. She glad that, when she looks to her left, Kate's mirror is no longer covered by cloth. While she might not be making much progress in her own recovery, Kate's little progressions are enough to keep her content for now.

_Someone's healing… It doesn't have to be me, and Kate deserves it more anyway._

"I heard you playing the violin earlier today," Max says. "It was really nice. Calming, you know?"

Kate smiles. "Thank you. It was really nice to play again. Calming, just as you said."

Kate sits at her desk and gestures for Max to take a seat on her bed. "So, any reason you're up this late?"

Max shrugs. "Same as you, I guess. I suppose I'll go to classes again tomorrow. You?"

"I should as well," she says. "I don't want to get too far behind. Even though I think Principal Wells would let us, I don't want to struggle in college because I hid away in my room."

"Did they find a new teacher to replace…?"

Kate shakes her head. "No, not that I've heard of. Stella said they've just been watching art documentaries in the mean time."

"That doesn't sound so bad."

Kate smiles and wrinkles her nose a bit, just like her bunny. "Maybe we'll get to learn a bit about drawing as well, not just photography. No offense, Max."

"None taken. I get that not everyone in that class wants to be a photographer. It just happened that the teacher they found used to be a famous photographer."

Kate stands and shuffles through her room. "How about a midnight tea date?" she asks. "I know I still have the stuff around here somewhere."

"You know, that sounds amazing. A cup of tea is exactly what I need right now," Max says.

She wants to savor this peaceful moment with Kate before she gets thrown back into a reality that she's not ready for, but can't hide from forever. She can't avoid the questions her classmates will ask, or the pitying, sad looks they'll give her, but she'll always have this night of movies with Chloe and tea with Kate. Her first happy memory since her release from The Dark Room.


	7. Aperture

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't own Life is Strange or the song "Aperture" by Sleeping at Last.

She hesitates at the doors of Blackwell's main building. Students walk around her to enter, throwing glances over their shoulders as they pass. It feels different—foreign—despite nothing having changed other than Jefferson's absence. But she's changed irreversibly. This will be the first time she's stepped in the building since her white innocence was ripped from her and tainted grey by someone she respected and looked up to.

Maybe Tobanga senses her impure spirit and gives her this feeling of being watched. Of being a stranger. She remembers talking to Mrs. Grant about Tobanga and the Native American connection of Arcadia Bay outside of the girls' dorm. She almost feels the slight chill of morning autumn air mixed with the dull warmth of the sun and the sounds of birds chirping as their day begins from that moment.

She sighs, adjusts the strap of her satchel over her shoulder, and pushes the door open. It's easier after the first step to make her way to class, but the stares of the other students and sudden lapse in their conversations when she passes by leave her uneasy.

Her locker is in the same place it's always been, but the entire school feels like a different world to her. Maybe Chloe was right about the whole Mandela Effect and she's slipped into another timeline without realizing it. One where everything is off so slightly, she can't figure out the exact difference.

She opens her locker and looks at the pictures on the inside of its door. Greeting them like she always used to seems like a silly notion right now, so she takes what she needs for class and shuts her locker in silence.

Warren gives her a quick tap on the shoulder and a smile as he passes by with Kate next to him. He doesn't interrupt the conversation he's having, but still shows his support.

_Warren and Kate get along really well together. I'm glad he's supporting her so much. Still, I feel bad keeping him an arm's length and a mile away._

" _And are you okay, Max?"_

Chloe asked her, but she never really answered. She doesn't remember what it feels like to be okay. Somehow, she thinks this isn't it. This hollowness inside of her.

It's easy to fall back into the steps again and go through the motions. Like hearing an old song on the radio that was once a favorite. She knows all the lyrics, but only remembers them when the music is playing. Then, her mouth is moving on its own and the words spill out. Only this isn't a song, it's her daily routine and has been since the start of September. Despite her absence, she returns seamlessly to it.

Max is, so far, way ahead of everyone else.

Flash.

You have all the right answers today, Max.

Flash.

I see you pretending not to see me.

Flash.

She shakes her head to clear Jefferson's voice, but it never works like that. Still, she refuses to give him power over her. He's taken everything else, so now can't he just leave her be?

Something hits her, and she's falling backwards. She stretches her right arm out to grab onto something, but finds everything around her rushing back to their previous positions as she unintentionally rewinds, and she pulls herself to her feet. This time, she sees Justin barreling towards her, skateboard tucked under his arm, with enough warning to press herself to the wall and avoid another collision. In her chest, her heart races and beats against its cage of bone.

"If it isn't Max Caulfield."

_No. No, that's not his voice. That's not him._

Max squeezes her eyes shut as her breath hitches. A hand falls on her shoulder and she turns with a gasp, her eyes shooting open.

_Jefferson's not here. Jefferson's in prison. Jeff—_

"Mrs. Grant?" she asks. She releases the breath she held and lets her shoulders relax from their tense position next to her ears.

Mrs. Grant greets her with a warm smile. "It's good to see you again, Max. Class isn't the same without you. Are you feeling alright? You look a little pale."

_But I never talk in your class._ _You can't miss me that much._

It's just a formality, she reminds herself. Mrs. Grant cares, of course. She's always been a mother hen type of teacher.

Max forces a smile. Mrs. Grant is walking on eggshells to spare her feelings, but it makes her uncomfortable how careful people will be around her. This is just the start, she knows.

"I'm fine. Justin almost ran right into me and my hearts still racing. It's good to be back, though, Mrs. Grant," Max says. "I hope I didn't miss too much."

"Don't you worry about a thing, Max. I've got a class to teach, but I'll see you soon enough. And remember, I'm always here if you need something," she says. "Anything at all."

When Mrs. Grant turns her back, Max lightly hits her forehead against the nearby wall. If only she could be absorbed by the bricks of Blackwell and be spared the torment of being a victim. She wants to be as invisible as she was before.

Her hand still tingles from using her power to save herself from Justin. What effects would this have? What has she changed without even realizing it?

_I could always go back to Seattle with Mom and Dad._

She sighs.

_And leave Chloe? … But what if leaving her would keep her safe?_

Her head starts throbbing, like there's a battering ram trying to open an escape path from her skull.

"I wish I never received this power," she whispers to no one. "I'm not feeling so super about it."

She admits that it was fun at first, hanging out with Chloe again and pretending they could save the world. But they messed with things they couldn't understand, couldn't even begin to comprehend, and Max had to face the consequences for being irresponsible with a gift she never wanted.

_Strange to think that Rachel carried this same curse. Did she ever feel like this? Like her reality was tearing apart at the seams and she was helpless to repair it._

Only after the bell rings does she realize she's alone in the hallway, her forehead still pressed against the cool surface of the wall. She rubs her eyes with the heels of her palms, weighing the idea of returning to her dorm for now and trying to go to class again later. Everyone stares enough already, she doesn't need to give them the excuse of her tardiness to take mental pictures of Jefferson's final victim. She knows they can't wait to trap her in The Dark Rooms of their minds, to look and wonder what took place there.

She leaves and walks back to her dorm. At least, in her favorite cocoon, she's safe from the world for now.

_Are you really safe in here? Even after he got his hands on you in the middle of the night? Plucked you right out of your cocoon._

"Shut up," Max says. She taps her hands against either side of her head in order clear the thoughts coursing through it, which works no better than her attempt to shake the voice of Jefferson away. With Jefferson in police custody, rotting away in a holding cell, she is safe.

She holds her one-eyed teddy bear close to her chest and repeats 'I'm safe' over and over until she falls asleep.

* * *

Returning in the afternoon is even harder than in the morning. She stands outside of her art classroom, unable to will her legs to step any closer and enter.

_I can't let him control me. I can't let him take over my life like this._

She takes a deep breath, presses her eyes shut, and crosses the threshold of the classroom. It's easier to open her eyes and find her seat after the initial steps, but she keeps her focus on the floor. She neither needs nor wants to see the decoration of this room right now.

Kate seems fine in her usual seat, and Max can't help but envy her. Why can't she put this behind her as easily? Why can't she pretend it was all just a bad dream?

_Kate was unconscious the entire time,_ the reasoning in her mind reminds her. _You remember pieces of what happened. You know that it wasn't a dream, and you'll always have to live with that. With your choices that led to that. Besides, she's letting people help her, like Warren. You barely even talk to Chloe about what happened. You'd rather bottle it up and put on a mask than face the truth._

She thinks back to rewinding in the hall, for something as simple as avoiding a collision. How natural it felt to just raise her hand and change the outcome, but what are the consequences of that? What else can such a small change effect?

She's not sure who she expected to see walk in to the room as their substitute teacher, but it wasn't Principal Wells. Still, there he stands at the front of the classroom with a DVD case in his hands. Before he speaks, he clears his throat. "For today, we'll be watching a documentary about the shift in art styles from the beginning of the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, and how those styles related to society and beliefs at the time."

Someone groans—Max suspects Taylor, she's never seemed like the type to enjoy a subject like Art History—and Principal Wells sets up the large TV in the corner for them to watch the film on.

"Now, now, students," he says. "You might find that you enjoy something different from the usual topics you study. Just give it a chance, and you might be surprised."

The TV bursts to life in color and sound as Principal Wells stands straight again with a sigh. "There we are," he says. He takes a seat and the monotonous voice of the documentary's narrator fills the room.

"Byzantine Art often depicted religious events or references. Many pieces contain angels—"

The purity of your own image.

Flash.

"—Somber tones—"

You feel, like, totally haunted by the eyes of those sad mothers and children.

Flash.

"—no shadows—"

Chiaroscuro—that beautiful word about the contrast between light and dark, the shadowplay that gives photography such… visual power.

Flash.

Then Victoria is dragging her down the hallway by her arm. "Look, we don't have to be friends," she says. "But you are _not_ okay right now."

"What?" Max asks. Then the realization hits her. The warmth running down from her nose, over her lips and down her chin. She knows even before she swipes the streams with her free hand and looks: blood.

Her nose is bleeding for the first time since her escape, the same day she rewinds for the first time since then as well.

She doesn't remember what happened between the flashes of memories and this moment, but she knows that these bursts of flashbacks are evolving. It's not just Jefferson's voice she hears now. Victoria's entered the mix.

Victoria pulls her all the way to the nurse's office, but Max realizes she likely wouldn't have made it there without guidance. With her thoughts in this jumble, her steps aren't steady enough to reach her destination without tripping or walking into something.

By the time they arrive and the nurse stops to inspect Max, the bleeding had drastically slowed. Still, the nurse gives Max a few tissues and lays her on the cot in the connecting room. "Just relax for now," the nurse says. "There's no need for you to rush or push yourself."

Victoria stands at the doorway with one arm crossed over her torso to grab her other arm's elbow. It's a pose Max knows well. The I'm-trying-not-to-be-in-the-way-by-making-myself-as-small-as-possible pose. Max notices a few spots of blood marking her cashmere sweater—a light purple today.

The nurse doesn't acknowledge Victoria further than a curt nod, and she turns to leave.

"Wait, Victoria," Max says, stopping her.

She pauses and looks over her shoulder at Max.

"Thank you," Max says. "Sorry about your sweater."

Victoria nods. "There'll be another one. We may not see eye-to-eye, but I'm here if you need me," she says.

She leaves before Max can respond, but Max is almost speechless at Victoria's kindness. _We might become friends one day,_ Max thinks. _Although, I'd settle for just not being hostile towards each other._

* * *

Chloe bursts into Max's dorm after her last class. "Why didn't anyone come get me when you were sent to the nurse?" she asks.

Max looks at Chloe, out of breath and supporting herself with her hands on her knees while she tries to catch it. "It wasn't a big deal," Max says. "I'm fine."

"Wow, Max, you're right. I feel completely reassured."

Max rolls her eyes. "Haha. I like your shirt, though. It's...different."

Chloe stands up straight to give Max a better view of her shirt's design. It's a tank top, as usual, but instead of a skull or animal, there's a drawing of a blue lotus unfolding its petals amidst ripples of water. Chloe grins. "Like what you see, Max?"

Max half-smiles. "I'm being serious, Chloe. There's something really peaceful about the picture on it. It's calming to look at."

Chloe winks. "Look all you want, Max. But you don't need to make excuses."

Max feels her face flush and she flops back on her bed to stare at the ceiling, hoping Chloe doesn't notice.

_She's just teasing you, Max. She always does this._

"In all seriousness, Max, make sure someone comes to get me next time," Chloe says. "You might think it's nothing, but you can't know that for sure. I can't either."

"You can't miss class, Chloe. Principal Wells is giving you _one_ more chance. Don't waste it."

"It wouldn't be wasted," Chloe says. "Besides, I think he would understand if I missed class to help you. Have you been in his office lately? The guilt of letting something like this happen under his watch is killing him. Literally. At this rate, I'll be surprised if he _doesn't_ drink himself to death."

"Why were you in his office lately?"

Chloe sits on the edge of the bed, looking over her shoulder at Max. "Just forget that part. The important thing is that I'm trying to tell you his office is filled with liquor. High end stuff. I bet it took an entire paycheck for him to buy all of that. Maybe two."

How easily Chloe barged into her dorm keeps crossing Max's mind as she lays there and Chloe rambles about various types of liquor she's tried over the years. Even after this timeline's series of events, she forgets to lock her dorm room.

"Hey, Chloe," Max says, ending Chloe's stream of talk. "Could I ask for a favor?"

Chloe nods. "Sure, Max. Anything."

"Could I stay at your house tonight? I was going to ask David if he could change my dorm's lock, but that could take a couple days and I don't feel safe here anymore."

Chloe stands and stretches. "Grab whatever you want to bring over, and I'll prepare the Max-mobile for departure."

Max breathes out, her entire body relaxing in relief. "Thanks, Chloe."

Even after her five year absence, Chloe's house still feels like Max's second home. Joyce makes them dinner after her initial surprise at seeing Max wears off. While she doesn't bring up anything related to Jefferson, Max knows by the way she words each sentence and takes extra care to prepare everything just the way she remembers Max likes it.

After dinner, she lays on Chloe's bed while Chloe sits at her desk doing homework.

"You sure you don't need to borrow my desk?" Chloe asks.

"I'm sure," Max says. "I made it through about twenty minutes of class today. No one has even mentioned make-up work to me."

"I wish no one mentioned make-up work to me." Chloe groans and lets her head fall to her desk's wooden surface with a thunk, the sound dulled by her knit cap. "Turns out letting your grades fall and then dropping out of high school is a bad idea and takes a lot of effort to fix."

Max plays on her phone as she listens to Chloe. It's not a complicated game, or one that requires much thought at all. Line up three smiley faces of the same color. They'll disappear, and her score goes up. Each face can only swap places with another face adjacent to it. Reaching a predefined score advances her to the next level.

Mind-numbing bliss.

"Better to get it over with now than wait until you're homeless and have hit rock bottom to go back and get a high school degree," Max says. "You can go to college, too. Study something you enjoy and make your own living."

"Yeah, yeah."

Chloe works late into the night on her homework with only a small lamp for light. Max stops playing on her phone when the battery gets low and plugs it in to charge. Since she has nothing else to do, she rolls over so the light is to her back and tries to fall asleep to the scratches of Chloe's pencil on paper and curses muttered under her breath followed by vicious erasing.

Eventually, Max hears the click of the lamp and its light fades from the room. With how quiet Chloe is in changing and crawling in to bed, she suspects she looks like she's sleeping.

She wishes that was true, with how heavy her eye lids feel. But no matter how long she keeps her eyes closed, sleep eludes her.

The mattress dips with Chloe's added weight beside her. Within minutes, she hears Chloe's soft almost-snores. She feels like a kid again just sleeping over at Chloe's house, but so much has changed since then. She's a different person now, shaped by her decisions and the ill-will of Jefferson. But Chloe's different now, too. Shaped by loss and abandonment. Finding her place in an increasingly lonely world.

_Not that I helped her at all. Even now, I can't remember why I never decided to even send a text to her. Would saying 'hey, how's it going' really have been that hard?_

She rolls over and looks at the wall the head of the bed is pressed against. A few inches above the pillows, Chloe wrote 'I can't sleep' in thick, black marker. At some point in this timeline, Chloe laid on this mattress and understood perfectly Max's current feelings.

She never thought of loneliness as something that could be shared.

* * *

Going to class the next time is a little easier, but Max still struggles entering her art class. It takes a handful of deep breaths and a set of closed eyes for her to find herself inside the room, breathing a sigh of relief. "Made it," she whispers.

She takes her usual seat, trying to ignore the curious stares directed at her after the last class. She doesn't remember what happened between the movie's beginning and Victoria pulling her through the halls, but it might be better that way. Memories haven't served her very well recently, and more negative ones aren't what she needs right now.

_It's not too late to ask Mom and Dad to take me back to Seattle._

She's kept them satisfied with lies that she's doing well and caught up in her classes. At least they no longer press the issue, but they continue to check-up on her with texts and calls. For now, she is able to fool them. With luck, they'll be far away in Seattle when she inevitably breaks.

Chloe barrels into the classroom and pulls Max's thoughts back to reality. With a grin, Chloe settles in the seat beside Max. "Hey, classmate," she greets. "Glad I'm not late."

"Chloe?" Max can't hide the shock in her voice. "What are you doing here? You aren't in this class. In fact, you hate art classes."

Chloe stretches and crosses her legs at the ankles, making herself comfortable. "You seem to be struggling with this class, so I talked with Wells about changing my schedule. This way, I'll be right here if you start to go all zombie-mode again."

Principal Wells comes in and sets up a new documentary—this one about unusual art mediums. The lights go out and the voice of another monotonous narrator fills the room with information no one pays much attention to.

"Chloe," Max whispers. "Thank you."

She sees Chloe nod out of the corner of her eye, illuminated by the TV screen's light. They watch the documentary in silence, and it's horribly boring. But Max embraces the dull film, clinging to the experience as a small piece of normality finally returning to her life.


	8. Chemicals

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't own Life is Strange or the song "Chemicals" by Mud Flow.

_She's standing at the cliff by the lighthouse in perfect serenity. A light breeze ruffles the hem of her deep blue dress and makes her golden doe necklace sway over her chest. She laments not bringing her camera with her to capture this moment of beauty bathed in sunlight, but she has to leave soon anyway. For now, she'll settle with holding up her hand and admiring the way orange droplets of sun bleed through her fingers. If only she could close her hand and capture them in her palm, like a firefly or butterfly._

_She watches them carry the casket through the cemetery to a headstone with a rectangle hole in front of it. Joyce cries the entire walk with David's arms around her and guiding her. No one else has many tears to shed._

_Now, they stand around the casket. No one has much to say. In fact, some of the people gathered barely knew Chloe, but they showed up to support Max and Joyce._

_Max can't find anything to say either. Sometimes the bonds between people are too complex to sum up in a matter of sentences. No string of words is capable of properly expressing them._

_The priest says prayers and sprinkles holy water over the oaken surface hiding Chloe's body within. While he talks, Max watches a blue butterfly flutter around the area before settling on the corner of the casket._

" _All those moments between us were real, and they'll always be ours."_

_Max hears her voice. Her laugh._

" _Chloe, I'm sorry," she murmurs._

"Max!"

She opens her eyes to blurred vision and the world around her shaking. Tears are still gathered at the corners of her eyes, but she passes them off as nothing with a big, pretend yawn. She's always gotten a little teary-eyed from huge morning yawns.

"Max! Max!" Chloe shouts, sounding more like a banshee in her ear this early than a human.

"What? Chloe stop shaking me."

Max rubs her eyes and Chloe's face adorned with a large grin showing off her white teeth comes into view. "You're… in a good mood," Max says.

"Do you know what day it is?" Chloe asks. She shifts her weight from foot-to-foot, unable to contain her excitement over… something.

Max sits up and stretches her arms high over her head. She feels the lingering somberness of a sad dream engraved in her mind. "Uh, Thursday?"

The excitement melts from Chloe's face and is first replaced by utter blankness, which then molds into Chloe doubled over and holding her stomach from laughing too hard. "Max, you dumbass," she says. "It's Halloween. Your face is absolutely priceless right now."

"So?" Max asks. "We're kind of old to trick-or-treat, Chloe."

Chloe shoves a poster in front of Max's face. She remembers seeing them in the halls of Blackwell throughout the month.

"Dana's Halloween Party? What? You wanna go?"

"Of course I want to go," Chloe says. "It's the first party being held at Blackwell since I've been re-enrolled. That, my dear Max, calls for celebration!"

"It's today. We don't have costumes."

"Leave that to me," Chloe says. "I think you'll like what I have in mind."

Max looks at her phone's clock, only for it to tell her it's way too early to be alive right now. She groans and rolls over, re-wrapping herself in Chloe's quilts. Autumn's precursor to Winter's chill has started to seep in through Arcadia Bay. "Chloe, you're impossible some days."

"Would you have me any other way?"

Max peeks one eye over the edge of the blanket. "Would it let me sleep until a reasonable time?"

Chloe laughs. "Get your beauty sleep, Max. You'll need it for the party tonight."

Chloe leaves Max alone, and Max prays that she'll be able to fall asleep without another strange dream to haunt her. After the melancholy mood her brain whipped up in its sleeping state, Chloe's exuberance seemed out of place.

Not that Max plans on sharing that particular dream any time soon. Especially not with Chloe.

At least the bed is still warm, and she has room for a few more hours of sleep in her schedule.

* * *

Chloe's first class starts a little earlier than her own, so Max takes the time to wander back into her dorm to pack another change of clothes or two to take back to Chloe's house. A soft knock at the door interrupts her and she finds Victoria standing on the other side.

"Hey… Max," she says, the words hesitant in leaving her mouth. She has one arm crossed across her stomach holding her opposite elbow. A protective posture, huddled into herself.

Max knows the feelings all too well and says, "Victoria, hi."

"I haven't seen you around the dorms lately," Victoria says. "So, I thought that I'd check on you while you're here."

"That's nice of you, Victoria. I've just been staying at Chloe's." Max looks around her dorm from over her shoulder. "This place just brings back some memories I don't want to deal with right now."

"Oh," Victoria says.

Max puts on the brightest smile she can manage. "Don't worry. I'm really doing a lot better now. Better every day, you know?"

The way Victoria raises her eyebrows and pinches her lips in a thin line makes clear her doubt in Max's words, but she doesn't press and Max doesn't offer more on the subject.

"Anyway, what I said the other day, I meant it. I guess I haven't been the nicest person to you, but I don't hate you and you didn't deserve what happened," Victoria says, rushing her words out in a single lungful of air.

"I may not have always been the best to you either, Victoria," Max says.

_Like when I rigged that paint bucket to spill on you, but at least I didn't take a picture, right?_

Victoria shrugs. "You haven't been the worst, either. I just wanted to let you know that and, uh, I'll see you around, Max."

"Wait," Max says. "How's Nathan doing? I haven't seen him."

Nathan Prescott. One month ago, Max would have been happy for his absence, the spoiled rich kid bent on controlling everyone else through the power of money. Now, however, Max knows that Nathan's character isn't as black and white as she originally believed. He needed help that was never given, and he was manipulated instead. Despite of that, he tried to keep her alive and help her when she needed it the most.

In the end, he became an unintentionally true friend. But she hasn't seen him since The Dark Room.

Victoria looks a little surprised by her question. "He's at an inpatient mental hospital in a city a couple hours away. Bigger than here and better equipped to handle his case. It's not as bad as it could have been, but it's still not great."

"He saved me," Max says. "I spent so much time hating him, but in the end he didn't deserve it."

"I guess we both have to learn that there's always more to a person than we originally believe," Victoria says.

The next sentence spills out of Max's mouth before she can stop it. "I'd like to visit him. Could you give me the address of the hospital he's at?"

"I'll give it to you during our next class. I have the name, I just need to look it up."

"Thanks."

They leave each other on a comfortable note: Victoria back to her own dorm and Max heading to her first class of the day. She considered telling Victoria about the red binder with her name written on it, the only one that would never be filled.

She wonders if the police confronted Victoria like they did her and Kate, even though her binder had no photos in it. Max doesn't want to talk about red binders right now, and she's sure Victoria wouldn't have wanted to hear it. Ignorance is bliss, and Max wishes she could've appreciated that bliss when she had it. Instead, she kept pressing forwards for the answers.

Kate's the religious one, but if someone asked Max whether or not she believed in Hell, she'd answer yes. She's been in Hell, and it's on Earth. Once you're in its grasp, salvation comes only from the intervention of kind souls looking out for you, she'd tell them.

She takes a deep breath as she steps outside of the dorm building. There's so much for her to dwell on, but she decides to simply be glad that she's on better terms with Victoria. Maybe they could be friends one day.

Outside of the main Blackwell building, she notices for the first time since her return that the pictures once displayed throughout the yard in front of the main entrance—a photography series by Mark Jefferson—have been removed.

* * *

Chloe can barely hide her grin after class, as she pulls a bag of clothes from her closet and presents them to Max. She bites her lower lip, but her smile still breaks through. To Max, she looks thirteen again. Back before tragedy struck and stole her happiness in the form of her father.

Max rifles through the bag. "Our costumes?" Max asks.

Chloe nods. "You can't tell what they are like that," she says. She grabs a piece from the bag and holds it up.

This time, it's Max's turn to try to not smile. "Pirates, Chloe? Really?"

"Arr, Captain Max."

Max chuckles under her breath and shakes her head. "Think we can really take over Arcadia this time?"

Chloe shrugs. "I don't see why not. In the end, I think it was always ours to begin with."

* * *

Max wears an eye patch, and Chloe wears a bandana. That's how it's always been, and that's how it feels right. Walking into the Blackwell gym, she felt thirteen again. Innocent and ready to capture the world in her camera, change it with her images. A time where every hour was golden, not only the sunrise or sunset.

The party is what Max expected it to be. Dozens of increasingly buzzed teenagers moving to the beat of electronic music with murmurs of a husky-voiced singer. It's reminiscent of the single Vortex Club party she attended, with the flashing lights and faint smell of alcohol weaving its way into the perfume of chlorine and sweat. But this time, there's dollar-store decorations plastered against the wall—flimsy skeletons and smiling jack-o-lanterns.

Chloe looks right at home immediately as she melds into the dance floor and weaves through the moving bodies like a fish moves through water. Max loses her in the crowd in a matter of seconds. She tries to find Chloe, but she doesn't stick out in the mesh of costume-clad teens. However, the sight of Warren and Kate dancing together bring a small smile to her face. Kate makes the perfect little nurse—far from the more popular slutty version of the costume—and Warren is dressed like an ape, just without the mask. Judging from the sweat glistening in neon, the costume is hot enough without a mask. She spots other familiar faces on the dance floor. A few zombies. A half-assed ghost made from a white sheet. Nothing unusual given the circumstances. But still no Chloe.

Victoria spots her in the blur of neon motion, dressed perfectly as Wednesday Addams, and nods her acknowledgment. Courtney and Taylor, sporting mime and cowgirl costumes respectively, give her small waves and polite smiles. All of which, she returns with her own half-smile and flip-of-her-hand wave.

" _What's wrong hippie? Can't dance?"_

She's never been much of a dancer, so Max drifts off to the side of the gym. Out of the way, just like always. She ends up standing by the refreshments. But when she's offered one, she just stares at it and the lights reflected off of its surface.

" _I had one sip of red wine, and that was it."_

It's Kate's face reflected back at her on the surface, wearing her pajamas with tear stains still marking her cheeks. She almost knocks the drink off of the table in her surprise, but reels in her shaking hands.

Max tries to find Chloe in the crowd, entering it herself this time. Wayward limbs strike her without intending to, but she barely feels anything right now. Just another face in the crowd, another existence bumbling through without direction.

When she finds herself on the other side of the gym, she's frozen in place by the sight that greets her. Her breathing stops, stuck in the back of her throat. The black and white glass frames, white button-up shirt with the sleeves rolled up, skinny jeans with the hems rolled, neatly polished loafers, and the hair that's short on the sides, but longer on top and molded into a sort of spiky hairdo. And it's all too familiar. And it's all too close. Even though, when she pays attention, the face isn't the same and the scruff of facial hair is just make-up, she's engrossed in memories already and far from reality.

She sees Chloe yelling at him and the words make it to her ears muffled. "Why the hell would you dress as Jefferson for Halloween at Blackwell?" is among the slew of verbal abuse Chloe throws at the boy.

Max doesn't know what happens next. She moves back through the crowd with her head kept low until she's assaulted by the cold air of an autumn night.

People _will_ care when you die, Max.

Flash.

We have all the time in the world now.

Flash.

If only you were around back in my day.

Flash.

* * *

She's in her dorm room, her once-favorite cocoon. She doesn't bother turning any of the lights on, but remembers to lock her door this time. She doesn't even make it to her bed before she falls to the ground and sits with her back against her door. In the dark of her room, she curls up and cries.

A few people must've seen her minor breakdown, as she hears knocks at her door.

"Max, are you in there?"

Kate.

"Max?"

Kate understands better than anyone, but Max keeps quiet. It's not understanding that she's looking for.

"Max," she says, her voice soft, "I don't know if you're in there or not, but I'll be here if you need me. Just call or text me, and I'll be right here."

She waits a second, then sighs and leaves. Only after the footsteps fade—multiple sets, Kate didn't come alone—does Max allow herself to let out the choked gasp she held in. Somehow, knowing others care causes her silent cries to evolve into wracking sobs. She pulls her eye patch off and tosses it to the ground. They tried to take over Arcadia, but it was Arcadia that took over her.

She doesn't deserve it.

Flash.

She deserves it.

Flash.

She doesn't know anymore.

Flash.

God, her head hurts. It's splitting apart, and she cradles it, becoming a horrible mess of physical and emotional pain. She can bring Kate back if she wants. A call. A text. The raise of her right hand. But her limbs are too heavy and she can't think straight anymore.

_Why is this happening to me?_

* * *

She doesn't notice Max leaving until she hears shouts of her name. Only then does Chloe turn her attention to the handful of people calling the name of her best friend and making their way to the exit. She grabs the collar of the kid who thought he'd be edgy and dress like Mark Jefferson. He's ready to wet his pants, judging from the fear shining in his eyes. He's smaller than she is, so it's an easy task to drag and throw him into the pool, eliciting a chorus of cheers from nearby students.

"Did you ever stop to consider how you might make the people he hurt feel?" she yells over the music. "Or did you think that you'd look so fucking cool dressing as that fucking pervert? Huh?"

She doesn't wait to hear an answer from him. She suspects he wouldn't have one in the first place.

As she charges towards the exit, everyone moves out of her way. They know her purpose, along with the extent of her anger, and won't hinder her. She appreciates it, she just doesn't have time to _really_ appreciate it. Not right now.

The chill of the night air doesn't bother her, barely registers in her mind. She's burning with adrenaline and more feelings than she's had at once in a long time. Of course it's Max who brings them out. Her beautiful, stubborn best friend who's slowly killing herself on the inside. She'll be damned if she lets that happen.

As the adrenaline fades, she thinks of how Max's eyes still look so dull. So empty. Her smiles never stretch as far or show as easily. She always seems nervous now, almost scared.

Sometimes, her mind flies from this world completely and into the nightmare of her own creation influenced by The Dark Room.

This late at night, light is scarce in the halls of the dorm, but the small amount spilling in the window from lampposts is enough. Chloe tries to open the door marked '219', but this _would_ be the single time Max remembers to lock it behind her. "I know you're in there, Max," she says. She wishes Max would open up to her for once, let her help in bearing the world on her shoulders. "Short of stealing my truck, there's really no where else you could've run to."

She hears sobs on the other side of the door and rests her forehead against it with a sigh. "You want to bear this all on your own." She closes her eyes and her world becomes the faint sound of sniffles and shaking breaths. "You're quiet, but you've always been hella stubborn. And that's not a bad thing. At least, not always."

Still nothing.

"You want to be strong. And if you can't find strength, you want to at least hide your weakness. Even though you know you can't bottle it up forever. You've refused to go to counseling, and you refuse to even admit that anything's wrong," Chloe says. "You won't talk to me, despite the fact that I really wish you would. You told me about that alternate timeline, the one where you saved my dad. Is this that different?" Her voice becomes thicker as emotion clogs her words, but she has no reason to hide it from Max. "Where has this stubbornness gotten you, Max? You're holed up in your room, in the dark, and crying your eyes out. Let me in."

Shuffling lets her know that maybe, just maybe, something in her little speech broke through to Max. She opens her eyes again and stares at the door, willing it to open. All she needs is to see Max on the other side. And the door finally opens.

Max stands across from her, hair messy and blue eyes red and puffy. Fresh tears continue to slide down her cheeks and off the tip of her chin.

"Chloe," she says.

Chloe feels her heart constrain with that single word. Two syllables, filled with so much suffering, lead her to wrap her arms tight around Max. "I'm right here."

Max, after a minute, returns the hug and buries her head in Chloe's shoulder. She doesn't mind the spots on her shirt where Max's tears stain.

"I'm not okay," she mumbles into the fabric.

Her words are quiet, but Chloe hears them anyway. She tightens her grip on Max. "That's nothing to be ashamed of," Chloe says, her own voice cracking as the familiar sting of forming tears burns her eyes. "I'm right here, and I'm always going to be. Alright, Max? I'm right here."

Max nods into her shoulder. "I'm not okay," Max repeats.

Chloe could almost laugh with the amount of relief coursing through her. Finally— _finally—_ Max is letting her in. She won't have to stand on the sidelines and wait for Max to tear apart anymore. She won't have to watch her bleed out on the inside anymore.

She won't lose another angel.

"You don't have to be okay, Max," she says. "And you don't have to be alone, either. Let me be your angel this time."

It might be an oddity for two pirates to be wrapped in an embrace in the middle of a dark dormitory hallway, but nothing has ever felt more right to Chloe.


	9. 101

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't own Life is Strange or the song "101" by WALLA.

"Are you sure?"

Chloe lingers at her bedroom door, keeping it perfectly halfway between open and closed.

Max sits up in the bed, still in her pirate outfit after being too emotionally exhausted to exchange it for pajamas. "I'm sure, Chloe," she says. "I don't think I'd make it. Not today."

"Do you want me to stay with you?" she asks.

Max shakes her head. "You know you can't. This is your only second chance. Don't waste it on me."

"It wouldn't be wasted," Chloe insists. "It would never be wasted for you."

Max feels a smile tug at her lips. She's afraid that if she lets it show, Chloe really will stay and throw away her chance at a better future. "I'll be fine, Chloe. The time to think might help me sort through things."

Chloe sighs, defeated. "If you're sure," she says. "I'll stop by at lunch, and we can go eat together."

She moves into the hall outside her door, but stops and looks back at Max before closing it. "And you better not be in that bed and pirate costume when I come pick you up for our lunch date, Max."

She winks and closes the door, thankfully before she sees the red blush flood Max's face.

_She's just teasing. It's not like it ever bothered you before. Why now?_

After the past few weeks, she can't help feeling closer to Chloe than ever before. It's not a bad thing, and she'll admit that Chloe has been her rock lately, but she wishes her heart would stop fluttering with every smile from Chloe. She wishes Chloe's teases would stop making her breath get stuck in her throat and flooding her face with heat.

"Stop thinking like this, Max," she tells herself. "You're just glad you can hang with Chloe after a few weeks of crazy. It's nothing."

Still, her words do nothing to quiet the little nagging feeling in her chest. After all she willing went through just to keep Chloe alive and well. She could have left things as they were, but she went back time and time again into The Dark Room.

The little moments they shared leading up to the Vortex Club play themselves over in her mind, but she tries to dismiss them. Swimming with Chloe in the middle of the night in Blackwell's pool. The sadness in her voice when she asked Max about Blackwell bros. Her anger towards the Jefferson imposter.

She had to feel _something_ for Max.

_Pull it together. Just best friends… like always._

* * *

_She's on the cliff again, looking out at the sun over the ocean before she knows she has to head to Chloe's funeral. She remembers every detail of the week she spent with Chloe, reconnecting after a five year silence between them._

_But in this timeline, Chloe was murdered never hearing from Max again after she left for Seattle. She never knew that her best friend sat a matter of feet away as she bled out on a bathroom floor feeling alone in the world and abandoned by the people she loved the most._

_The area around her changes and Max is in the Two Whales with Warren._

" _Max, you've been staring at that picture for awhile," he says. "Are you okay?"_

_She blinks and looks around the little diner, feeling like she's experiencing it for the first time. "Yeah, I guess," she says._

_This body isn't hers, not originally. The memories flooding her mind aren't hers either. She was not this girl from birth, but has become her after she left this physical shell. The one thing she's certain of is that all this Max held dear is gone now. She fled and left a new consciousness behind. A new soul with the same name and memories._

" _I'm just feeling a little left behind," she admits._

_Warren puts his hand on his shoulder. "I'm right here for you, Max," he says. "We'll get through this storm and figure out those wicked time traveling powers of yours."_

_The ghosts of Jefferson's touch feels fresh on her skin, having only been free for a short time by now. The memories are enough to turn her stomach into a nauseous mess._

" _Thanks, Warren. I've had a long night, and it must be getting to me."_

" _You could probably take a nap in the storage room. I doubt we'll be able to leave anytime soon and there aren't any windows there. It's the safest place to hide from a storm at the Two Whales."_

" _That doesn't sound like a bad idea. I can barely keep my eyes open."_

A flash of lightning followed by roaring thunder in her dream brings Max back to reality and she peels her eyes open. She gets up and browses through the closet. Chloe's clothes don't fit her very well, but Rachel's do. So Chloe spent a few hours one day separating Rachel's into one section for Max to use. They might not be exactly her style, but they're comfortable.

The smell of smoke sticks to the clothes in the closet. Chloe tries to smoke outside or near an open window, but the scent lingers on her belongings. In Seattle, Max hated walking passed smokers on the sidewalk. Yet, here on Chloe's things, it's different. Comforting, somehow.

She grabs a set of clothes, showers, and heads downstairs to find Joyce in the kitchen, scrubbing dishes from breakfast.

"Hey there, Max," she greets. "I didn't know you were still here."

"Hey, Joyce," Max says. "Yeah, I didn't quite feel up to school today."

"Chloe told me about it this morning. Some people really don't think about their actions. I hope Principal Wells finds out and disciplines that boy. I'd give him hell if he were my son."

"I just wasn't expecting something like that," Max says.

"How could you? Anyway, you hungry, Max? The eggs should still be warm, and I can cook you up some toast to go with them. No bacon this time. Ran out, I guess."

Max feels the emptiness weighing in her stomach at Joyce's offer. "That sounds amazing, Joyce. I'm starving."

Joyce chuckles and gives Max a small smile. "Then you sit on down. Breakfast is coming right up."

Max returns Joyce's smile, and it feels so natural for the corners of her lips to pull up for once. There isn't pity in Joyce's expression, only kindness. And Max fools herself into thinking that maybe, just maybe, Joyce understands what it's like to be hurt and not want everyone to coddle you. No matter how much you might need it, you only want certain people to know and acknowledge your vulnerability.

* * *

"Everyone's talking about what happened last night," Chloe says from across the table in their booth at the Two Whales.

Max sighs. "Great. Just what I need."

But Chloe shakes her head. "Not what you think. The kid who dressed like, uh, _him_ got suspended—though I'm still hoping he'll end up expelled. Principal Wells found out and apparently wasn't happy. I can't blame him. I wasn't thrilled to see that kid last night either," she says. "You missed it, but I threw him into the pool."

Max laughs, imagining Jefferson being thrown into a pool by Chloe—the cool image he tried so hard to create and preserve ruined by a bit of water. "I kinda wish I stuck around to see that."

Chloe smirks. "I'm not against doing it again."

"I hope that won't be necessary." The momentary joy fades from Max. "It was scary, Chloe. I thought that was really Jefferson at first."

"Great costume. Horrible costume choice."

Max pokes at the food left on her plate, what she couldn't finish from her generous portion.

"Are you gonna be alright?" Chloe asks.

Max mulls over Chloe's question, biting back the automatic 'I'm fine' resting on the tip of her tongue, then sets her fork down with a soft clink and looks at Chloe, whose blue eyes search for an answer. "I don't know," Max says. "I mean, it's not last night that bothers me, not really. It's how easily it happened, you know? How can something so small, so simple like a costume, make me absolutely lose it?"

Chloe reaches across the table and gives Max's hand a tight squeeze. "That wasn't small, Max. You thought that someone who tormented you for nearly a week straight—and much longer from what you tell me about timelines and junk—was standing right in front of you. You hella deserved to lose your shit after that," she says. "Anyone would have."

"Maybe."

"Not even close to being a 'maybe', Max. It's okay to not be okay. Okay?"

Max sighs. "Okay."

* * *

Chloe takes Max with her back to Blackwell when lunch is over, but Max heads to her dorm again instead of class. She doesn't want to deal with other students after her episode. Chloe made her admit that she's not okay, but that doesn't mean she won't stop pretending to be around everyone else at Blackwell.

She makes a mental note to ask David about changing her door's lock. To ease her mind, she moves her chair from her desk and props it under the doorknob.

She grabs her laptop and Warren's flash drive in preparation of a mini movie marathon until Chloe is done with classes for the day. She sets the laptop up on the floor so she can see it when looking over the side of her bed and starts a movie—called _Mysterious Skin_ , or something like that. Warren's stash of movies never lacks the odd and unknown.

She doesn't pay much attention to the movie. Instead, she mostly listens to it while looking at the pictures composing her Max Caulfield Photo Memorial Wall. In so many of the pictures she appears in, she's smiling and truly happy. But Max no longer knows this innocent version of herself and seeing her image like it's a stranger's is frightening. Will she forget herself, or the person she used to be, given enough time?

She gives the pictures on her wall a final glance, but one catches her eye and she pulls it from its spot.

"What the—" she mutters.

It's Chloe and Rachel. Their arms held above their heads and their hips cocked in a dancing pose. The burning sun behind them nearly made their images into silhouettes, but Rachel's dangling necklace glinted and Chloe's smile could barely be seen.

Max flips the photo over in her hands. When she looks again, it's the same image.

_Where did this come from?_

She puts the photo down and grabs her laptop. Pausing the movie, she launches her web browser and types in 'Mandela Effect'. The first links reiterate what Chloe told her the other day. A few mention confabulation, and Max looks into them when it's clear the other links offer very little new information.

She keeps the page open and waits for Chloe to pick her up at the end of the day. At least she should have some useful input about the picture and idea of false memories.

* * *

"I remember this," Chloe says. She holds the photo by its edges, careful not to smear its surface. "We just finished a long week at Blackwell—a couple big tests and whatever. So when Friday came along, we pretty much said 'fuck it' and drove to the beach. Rachel brought a small radio and we jammed out in the sand for hours."

"It was just you and Rachel?" Max asks. "What about the picture? Someone had to take it."

Chloe shrugs. "I have about as many answers as you do to that. It was just Rachel and me. No one else, I swear. There never was a picture taken of us that day. Well, maybe of Rachel at Blackwell before we left since everyone practically begged her to model for various art projects."

Max takes the photo back as Chloe hands it to her and places it back on her wall in the spot left open in its absence. "Do you think it has to do with the Mandela Effect you mentioned the other day?"

"Maybe. Most likely. At the end of the day, I'm flying just about as blind as you are."

Max opens her laptop and shows Chloe the web page she left up. "When I looked up 'Mandela Effect', this came up as well," she explains. "I was hoping you might have a little input."

"'Confabulation,'" she reads aloud.

Max gives her a few minutes to read through everything.

"I get it," Chloe announces. "It's like an alternate explanation to the Mandela Effect. Instead of things slipping through timelines, people simply create false memories unintentionally. But how does that explain when the memories are shared among many people? Weird."

"Weird?" Max asks. "Really, Chloe? You tell me that you think my belongings are shifting through timelines, and this is the thing you find weird?"

"Given your recent time manipulation, which one makes more sense?"

Max sighs. "Fine, I concede. Plus one point to Chloe's logic."

"Seriously, Max. Take that picture for example. Confabulation only deals with memories. You can't unintentionally create a picture with your imagination and then have it become real. That's ridiculous." she says. "In some timeline, you came back to Arcadia when Rachel was still alive and took that picture of us."

"Do you think we would have been friends? Honestly?" Max asks. It's a little off topic, but it's only one of the questions currently eating at her.

Chloe nods. "I really do. She had a way of seeing the best in people and finding common ground with them. She could always find _something_ to build a bond off of."

"Did you love her?"

Chloe's eyebrows raise and almost reach the hem of her beanie while her mouth opens and closes like a fish's. She takes a deep breath and moves her focus to the Max Caulfield Photo Memorial Wall. "Of course I loved her, but I wasn't _in_ love with her. Infatuation, maybe. A little crush. But she appeared in my life when I needed an angel the most and saved me from myself. Of course I felt something after that. Not that it would have mattered if I was in love with her. She clearly didn't feel that way about me."

_Of course it would matter._

"Sorry," Max says. "I didn't mean to bring up painful memories. The question just kinda slipped out."

Chloe shakes her head. "It's fine. I needed to hear myself say it, anyway. As a way of finding closure. Sorting it out with myself."

Chloe turns the laptop off and puts it on the desk. "I didn't realize it at the time," she says, softly, "but my love was already somewhere else. Even before I met Rachel."

Chloe clears her throat and looks back at Max, only for her attention to be pulled away. "I thought you ate your bear's eye when you were a kid?"

"Uh, yeah. My parents rushed me to the ER," Max says. "I guess they were afraid it'd cut open my intestines. Not that I was old enough to understand or care about consequences."

"See?" Max lifts the familiar softness of her bear up to show Chloe, but Chloe shakes her head and points at its eyes.

"See two eyes? Because that's what your bear has."

Max turns her bear over and find that he has two eyes now. She sighs and sets him down. "Even my bear is changing? This sucks. How do I stop this? What's going on that's messing with the timelines?"

Chloe takes a seat next to Max on the bed. "I wish I could give you all the answers you want, Max," she says. "But I have no idea what's going on either. Just know that I'm going to be right here through all of it, okay?"

"Thanks, Chloe. I—" Max cuts herself off for a second. "I really appreciate it."

_I think I'm falling for you._

* * *

By mid-November, Max finds herself waking up too close to sunrise for any sane creature and stumbling into Chloe's truck. In the driver's seat, Chloe is barely more alert.

Their first stop is ten minutes from Chloe's house at a cafe, where they load up on beautifully caffeine-loaded coffee. Only at this point does Max feel almost human again and scorch her tongue and throat due to her eagerness to energize. While they drink at a little table in the corner, she savors the smell of coffee beans and freshly baked pastries bursting with fruits. A glance at the glass case filled with delectable sweets is enough to make her mouth water.

_Want. All._

"I went to a lot of cafes in Seattle," she says, breaking their amicable silence. She pulls on the hems of her hooded sweatshirt's sleeves to cover her hands. The cold air forces both of them to dress a little heavier, but Max loves the picture of a sleeping kitten with the words 'Not Right Meow' written across the chest of her hoodie. "But the city is so big that most of them were always busy and overflowing with people. It's like no one had a minute to spare and relax, the way they rushed in and out."

Chloe grins over the rim of her steaming mug, washing down crumbs of the two danishes she devoured in record time. "Oh? The perfect city isn't so perfect. Even as a kid, you idolized that place. It was your dream for years," she says.

"I idolized a lot of things I shouldn't have," Max says. "My dreams changed, too. Seattle was nice, but it wasn't what I imagined."

"What are your dreams now?" Chloe asks.

"I don't know. I'm still looking."

"Will you let me know when you find them?"

"Hell, Chloe. I expect you to be right next to me during them."

Chloe laughs. "Now that sounds like a plan I can get behind."

* * *

On their way out of the cafe, they order another cup of coffee apiece to-go. The temperature continues dropping as winter nears, so a warm beverage is perfect to keep their hands toasty as they pack back into Chloe's truck.

Max ends up holding both coffees as Chloe drives, due to the lack of cup-holders. She almost lets go of them after Chloe speeds over a couple nasty bumps in the road and forces Chloe to be a little more careful as she would very much like to _avoid_ being burnt to a crisp. To which Chloe replies that they're on their way to a hospital anyway, so she'll be fine.

Despite her punk appearance, Chloe lets Max play a mix of acoustic covers through her radio. She seems to enjoy the slower beat and raw, raspy voices spilling through her speakers. So Max is able to contently stare out the window as they go and let her mind drift.

* * *

"We should be there in a half hour or so," Chloe announces.

Max fidgets in her seat. "That felt like a pretty quick drive."

Chloe shrugs, tapping her hands on her steering wheel. "It's just far enough to be annoying, but not far enough to set aside more than a day for."

"I could have taken the bus or something if you didn't want to drive," Max says. She never wanted to annoy Chloe with what she thought would be a simple request.

"That's not what I meant," Chloe says. "I really don't mind driving you there. I guess it just doesn't seem like a high priority to me to visit Nathan."

Max says, "He's not bad. He needed help, and no one gave it to him."

"Kindred spirits?"

"What?"

"You and Nathan," Chloe explains. "You both needed help, but weren't receiving it. You because of your stubbornness."

"And Nathan because of his family and circumstance," Max finishes for her. "I never considered him a kindred spirit, but maybe we are."

"It's a weird world, right."

Max snorts a laugh. "That doesn't even begin to describe it. I miss when we were kids and everything was simple."

"I think everyone feels that way to some extent," Chloe says. "You have the memories, and that has to be enough."

"Does it ever feel like enough to you?"

Chloe honks at a driver who cut her off and flips her middle finger at him. "No. It never does."

They pull into the gated parking lot of the Oregon State Mental Hospital.

"This isn't what I expected," Max says. "It actually looks pretty nice."

The building itself is tall and new, built with plenty of windows dotting its sides. Max thought it would be old and decrepit. A building falling apart that no one would want to enter, except to hunt for ghosts as it looked like a prime haunted location waiting to unleash crazy upon the living who enter.

The surrounding area is composed of trees with an array of leaf colors: brown, orange, yellow, and red. It's secluded without feeling isolated. More like a cabin in the woods to visit for a bit than a hospital to be locked away in.

"You don't have to go in and see him, Max," Chloe says. "We can turn around and go home."

The way she holds onto the steering wheel with enough force to color her knuckles white leads Max to believe that she's the one who's more nervous.

Max hides her hands in her sleeves. She doesn't want Chloe to see them shaking or notice that anything is off. Already, her mind feels like it's on the edge of an abyss threatening to swallow her whole. Whispers of _his_ words tickle her ears.

_It's just Nathan,_ she reminds herself. _He helped you, and he never wanted anyone to get hurt._

"If you become Zombie Max in there, they might lock you away," Chloe adds after Max's silence. "It won't be as easy to be released the second time."

"I won't go Zombie Max," she says, sounding more confidant than she is. "It's just Nathan, and he's the reason I'm alive right now. It's my turn to help him."

She takes a deep breath and steps out of Chloe's truck, facing the walkway to the hospital's entrance. Chloe follows her lead.

"Here we go," she says.


	10. Neptune

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I do not own Life is Strange or the song "Neptune" by Sleeping at Last.

"Max? What are you doing here?" Nathan asks as he's lead into the visitation room by a nurse.

It's a simple room with round tables and sets of chairs. Carpets that are regularly vacuumed cushion each footstep while lamps with plain white shades wait to light the way at night. A large window in the middle of one wall lets sunlight flood in. At the door, two workers stand guard. Security—Max guesses. In case a violent patient acts up during a visit.

This place doesn't have the sickeningly strong chemical fume of a normal hospital, although hints of cleaners linger from when workers have to clean up after the patients. Plants lining every hallway give the building a pleasant, earthy smell. Paintings adorn every wall with pigments perfectly mixed and spread into soothing images of rivers and forests. Cleaners for an infected mind, not an infected body.

Nathan settles across from her and nods his thanks to the nurse before she leaves. "No offense, but you're one of the last people I expected to see here," he says.

Max allows herself a small smile and says, "You kind of saved my life, Nathan. I wanted to see how you were doing."

He's paler now and wears plain grey clothes, the style a mix of pajamas and staff scrubs. His normally neatly combed hair is a mess atop his head. What sticks out the most are the dark circles under his dull eyes. The spark of anger Max remembers from Blackwell is gone, and there's nothing to take its place.

"I did what I should have done a long time ago," Nathan says. "Nothing more."

The silence between them is awkward with neither having held a real conversation with the other, but Max has a question to which she needs an answer. "How did you get involved in this?"

Nathan sighs and rubs his palm down his face from the base of his nose. "It was never my choice," he starts. "I was born into it, years after Jefferson became involved."

Everybody… used me.

Flash.

Nathan looks towards the window and taps his fingers on the table while he continues. "My family struck oil generations ago, and that was the start of our wealth. Wealth is power, and power… it does things to people.

"My great-grandfather grew obsessed with exerting his power over victims. He wasn't a photographer, and cameras at that time were far different from what they are now, but he sketched. He always had a pencil and paper with him. His sketchbooks are hidden away at my house, and my dad showed them to me when I was young in preparation for me to continue the displays of power started by my great-grandfather. Like he was grooming me from the beginning for this work. Trying to make something horrible into something normal."

Nathan's face turns slightly green and his hand on the table balls into a fist. "They were sick drawings, Max," he says. "As sick as Jefferson's pictures. At least with the drawings, you can pretend they're fake. It's always the same with each generation. Women drugged and bound."

"Why?" Max asks.

"Think about it. Our world has always seen women as victims. So much so that a term for it was created. Damsel in distress. Someone who has to be saved, unable to save themselves. Regardless of whether or not you agree, that's how society views it."

Max thinks back over the works of fiction she's been exposed to over the years. Even in classics like _Popeye_ , Olive Oyl always needed to be saved. That was the entire show's point, saving the damsel in distress. In the _Mario_ series, he spends each game saving Princess Peach after she's kidnapped. The more she thinks of it, the more she realizes the truth to Nathan's words.

Women are often portrayed as the victim, and his family wanted to take that to the extreme.

"Just because of that, your grandfather decided to draw pictures of women while they're drugged and bound to start some sick legacy?" she asks.

"I don't know if it started like that, but that's all I saw. My dad told me I was born to take advantage of the weak like this. He had his good friend Mark Jefferson—a man with similar obsessions to himself—willing to train me, but I think Jefferson really just wanted access to our money and bunker. They tried to push their obsession onto me, lead me to believe that it was my destiny to take these pictures at the expense of the innocent." He pauses. "It's hard to grow up in a world like that and see the faults without them being pointed out to you."

"What changed?"

He shrugs and turns to face her. "Rachel. She died because I messed up, and I loved her. I… I never realized what we were doing until I saw her face after she woke up in The Dark Room. She looked so scared and so angry. At me. When she saw Jefferson there, she lashed out at him. She really was in love with him, and trusted him. So he used that and betrayed her. Have you ever seen someone go through those feelings?

"Well, Jefferson doesn't like his subjects to be so lucid and uncooperative. He had me drug her again, but I told him I just did. Not that he cared. And I overdosed her because of that."

His voice cracks and he tilts his head down, but Max saw the tears lining his eyes before he hid them.

I didn't want to hurt Kate or Rachel, or… I didn't want to hurt anybody.

Flash.

Watch out, Max. He wants to hurt you next.

Flash.

Sorry.

Flash.

"It wasn't your fault, not really," Max says. "You never had a choice in all of this. And at least now you can heal and find what you really want to do. No destiny bullshit."

"I'll always live with this. And you'll have to live with what happened to you."

"I know," she says.

Nathan tilts his head up. "I was scared for you, Max," he says. "It's not a secret that we weren't on good terms, but his obsession with you became horrifying. Given enough time on his own, I don't want to know what he would have done. It's lucky that you and your friends managed to put him on edge. When he started to lose the calm, calculating method of his work, I thought there might be a chance to end it.

"You said that I saved you, but I think you saved me, Max. From a Hell that I never wanted to be part of to begin with. So thanks."

Max reaches out to pat Nathan's hand on the table. "A lot happened in Arcadia Bay that no one deserved to experience, but we all have at least one person who wants to help us through it. Help us heal," she says.

"Who do I have?" Nathan asks. He sounds defeated, and his shoulders slump. He's the shell of an angry boy, but there's room now to fill that shell with something better.

"Victoria," Max says. "And me, if you want. I know you said we don't have to be friends when you helped me, but we could be. After all, we did save each other."

"Thanks, Max. Thanks for visiting, too," Nathan says. "It gets lonely way out here."

"What about the rest of your family besides your dad? Don't they visit?"

Nathan shakes his head. "My mom is dealing with the publicity and trying to keep our businesses from sinking because of our diminishing reputation. My sister is off doing her own thing on a different continent, but promised to visit as soon as she can. She ran from our dad, but I don't think she ever knew the extent of our history. I think Dad knew she wouldn't do it." A smile spreads on Nathan's face. "She always looked out for me. One of the most kindhearted people you'll ever meet."

"I'm sorry. I didn't know," Max says. "I'll come back and visit again. Maybe I'll bring Victoria with me and let Chloe passed the lobby."

"Chloe's here? Well, I did think there was… something between you two when I saw you all over Blackwell together, like you were on a mission. And then how broken she was when you were in The Dark Room."

Max feels the heat flood her face and knows that she's blushing. She clears her throat and looks away.

"Would you mind telling her that I'm sorry for what I did?" he asks, taking a hint and changing the subject. "You can let her know that I burned the picture I took. Seeing it made me sick."

Max remembers the picture he's talking about. And honestly, she felt sick seeing it as well. Chloe in the fetal position, her eyes wide and mind clearly miles away. There are too many pictures in Arcadia, so that one being gone is a welcomed change now.

"I'll let her know."

* * *

_She looks at the mirror in the Two Whales' bathroom, only to find Rachel Amber staring back at her._

" _Why did you get to live?" she asks. "Why you, and not me?"_

" _Rachel… I don't know. I'm sorry. I'd change it if I could."_

_Rachel laughs, cold and mirthless. "You've changed enough already. By all rights, both you and Chloe should be enjoying the afterlife with me. Was it all really worth it, Max? You could have accepted your fate and died. Instead you chose to suffer for the rest of your life, haunted by memories."_

_She reaches out of the mirror and wraps her hands around Max's throat, squeezing until she gasps for air. Black marker covers the mirror one stroke at a time, writing out 'Rachel in The Dark Room' over and over. Within seconds, even Rachel's image is obscured by the words._

_The mirror shatters into blue feathers and Max rushes to exit before she's grabbed again by something new._

_The diner is filled with people, and they're all staring at her when she bursts in. They don't say anything, but she swallows the bile rising in the back of her throat from their intense gazes. She keeps her head down and walks passed them, until her arm is grabbed and she's forced to turn and face the culprit._

_Herself._

_Variations of Max occupy an entire booth. One wearing Chloe's jacket is the one that grabbed the real Max's arm. She's surrounded by Max with a deep blue dress and golden necklace, Max with a striped shirt and purple cardigan, Max with a green jacket, white shirt, and dream catcher necklace, and Max with a light grey hoodie and Jane Doe shirt._

" _Why you and not us? We're the same, so what makes you so special?" one asks._

" _I don't know… I didn't ask for any of this," Max says. "It's a curse."_

" _So you cursed us with it."_

_Max tries to pull her arm free from her duplicate's grip, but it's too strong. Her wrist feels close to snapping."I didn't. I didn't do anything to any of you. I don't even know what you mean."_

_They share sadistic grins between each other. "You made decisions, and then left us to deal with them. Is that fair to us? We can't even change it like you can. Guess we're not made the same as the original. Just cheap knock-offs."_

" _If I could give you this shitty power, believe me I would," Max says. "But it doesn't work like that."_

" _No, you can't give us what we need to clean up your mess. You can't do anything to make it right."_

" _Then what do you want from me?"_

_The Max with a golden necklace is in front of her within a second, wrapping the chain around Max's neck. "We want you to suffer, too."_

_Her ability to breath diminishes as the necklace becomes tighter and tighter. "I already suffer. Everyday because of this. Because of all of this."_

Her world shakes with Chloe's face hovering above her. "Chloe," she grumbles. "Chloe, I'm awake. Please stop."

She stops, and moves back to her side of the bed. "It's been over a week, Max," she says. "You've had nightmares every night since we visited Nathan. What shook you up so much?"

Max can't make out the details of Chloe's face in the limited moonlight spilling through the window, but she knows what she'd see. The worry that overtakes Chloe's face so often now. After these last weeks, she's seen it enough times to memorize each line that forms. "You act like you think I'm hiding something."

When Chloe stays quiet, Max says, "Chloe, I don't know why my nightmares have gotten so bad since visiting. I really have no idea what would have caused it."

"Was it about the other Maxes again?" she asks in a whisper.

"Yeah."

"You don't… You don't think it means something, do you?"

Max shakes her head. "I think it means I'm losing my mind, but we both knew that part already. So, no. Not really."

"You gonna make it back to sleep? It's kinda the middle of the night still," Chloe says. She rushes to add, "It's fine if you can't. We can go on a midnight drive and find some dump that'll serve us coffee or whatever this late."

"I'll be fine."

"Max…" she warns. "No lying to me, remember?"

"I'm not. I'll be fine tonight. It was just a bad dream."

Chloe rolls over and drapes her arm over Max. "Well, I guess I'll have to be your safety blanket. Keep away the bad dreams."

Max's heart tries beating out of her chest at Chloe's closeness. In her stomach flutter dozens of butterflies. Everything feels foreign in the best way, and she hopes that morning never arrives so Chloe won't let go.

* * *

Thanksgiving comes and goes in a refreshing bout of peace. Max decides to stay in Arcadia Bay and enjoy a turkey dinner prepared by Joyce. Her break from Blackwell for Thanksgiving isn't long enough to justify a trip to Seattle anyway.

Then it's December and Max sits on the floor next to Chloe with her fireplace burning. "Feels like we're kids again," she says. "Just need a cup of hot cocoa with plenty of marshmallows."

"Ew, no thanks," Chloe says. "You know I like my hot cocoa overflowing with whip cream. No marshmallows for me."

Max nudges Chloe with her elbow. "You're so weird. You _know_ that the marshmallows all soaked in cocoa are the best part."

"As usual, we'll have to agree to disagree on this, Mad Max."

"Alright. Alright," she concedes. "But I know you'll see the light someday, Chloe."

The lapses in their conversations aren't tense or negative in anyway, not with the crackling of the firewood filling in for their words.

"You're going back to Seattle for Winter break," Chloe says, bringing up the topic they've both avoided since Thanksgiving.

"Probably. My parents wanted me there for Thanksgiving, and you know how they've been since the, uh, whole Dark Room thing," Max says. She watches the fire dance over the logs fed to it. Beautifully destructive.

Chloe twists the bracelets on her wrists, keeping her hands from being idle. "Are you coming back this time?" she asks.

Max looks at Chloe, but Chloe keeps her attention on her hands. "What? Yes, Chloe. Of course I'm coming back this time."

"How do I know?"

She doesn't even sound angry, and that's what hurts the most. It's pure helplessness. They both know that if Max wants to leave, she has every right to. Go back to her family and get away from the nightmares haunting her every night in Arcadia.

"You just have to trust me."

"I trusted you last time. That didn't work out so well, did it, Max?"

"This is different."

"Yeah? What makes it different?" Chloe spits out. "You're just leaving me again."

"It's different because I think I'm starting to feel something beyond friendship with you, Chloe," Max bursts out. "And I don't wanna screw up this time, because I don't think I could make it five years without you again."

And Chloe's arms are around her before she can blink. "I knew I wasn't crazy thinking you felt something too. Max, I've already loved you for awhile."

Max returns the hug and buries her face in Chloe's shoulder. "How do you now for sure?"

Chloe laughs. "I just do. You'll figure your feelings out sooner or later, and I'll be right here when you do," she says. "Although I'm biased towards the 'Yes, I love you, Chloe' option."

"Chloe, thank you. These past two months, you've really been the only thing keeping me together."

"You know I always will, but I thought you were doing better lately," she says. "You've seemed well."

They move to sit on the couch. "I've had a bad feeling these past few days. I thought it was nothing at first, but it's just been getting stronger."

"What kind of bad feeling?"

Max shrugs. "I feel like something's wrong, or something's going to happen. And I can't stop it. It's that feeling you get when you know you've messed up, and now you're waiting for punishment."

Chloe pats Max's arm. "You felt that way after your tornado visions. Do you think it's like that again?"

"I hope not. I haven't used my power in a long time, and things have been better. I mean, yeah, not everything is great. But I can manage," she says. "Besides, I'm having nightmares about Rachel and practically clones of myself, which is a huge step up from a tornado. At least tornadoes are possible."

"If you asked anyone other than me, they'd tell you that time travel isn't possible either. But, well, we both know it is. At the same time, we don't know if anything will happen at all. No offense, but you're pretty low on the list of Arcadia's sane population after what you went through."

Max sighs, which turns into a small laugh. "I'm not offended. You're right, this could be nothing and I might be worried because I'm paranoid. I almost hope that's the case. It'd be easier to be diagnosed as crazy—again—than to try and handle whatever dreams like that mean."

"One day at a time," Chloe says.

"One day at a time," Max echoes.

With the tip of her boot, Chloe closes Max's suitcase. "I guess that's it," she says. "You're really going."

Max zips the case, shoving in the bits of cloth trying to escape. "Yeah. My parents are about an hour out, so it's too late to turn back now."

"Send them back alone. Big deal."

"Chloe, we've talked about this," Max says. "I'm going to Seattle for Christmas, and then I'm coming back to Arcadia Bay."

"Are you sure you'll be okay?"

Max shrugs. "I can't be sure of anything other than that I have to do this."

"You don't have to prove anything, Max. Everyone knows you've been through Hell, people don't escape that unscathed."

Max shrugs. "But I do have something to prove, Chloe. I've been relying on you a lot to not completely slip away from reality, but I've been doing really well lately," she says. "And you'd know that. My nightmares aren't intense anymore and my nose hasn't bled. It's been weeks since anything major has happened."

"So you want to tempt fate and see if you can fly solo now."

"I just want to know if I have any shred of independence left."

"I watched all those art documentaries for you, and you're leaving me to test yourself." Chloe's smirk takes the edge off her words.

"They were for your own benefit," Max says. "You needed a little more culture in your life."

Chloe shakes her head with a groan. "Are we just not going to talk about what you told me the other day? About feelings that you _might_ have? You haven't even brought it up and you're about to leave now."

Max sighs and picks up her suitcase. "Let's save it for a day when my parents aren't coming to take me to another state in less than an hour."

She looks at Chloe's face and forces out a smile. "Look, I'll go there and be back in two weeks. We can talk about it all you want then, because I will still be fine and you will still be fine. Everybody is going to be fine and in Arcadia."

"I'll drag you back if you don't return on your own, Max."

Max laughs and Chloe joins her. "Deal."


	11. Better Still

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't own Life is Strange or the song "Better Still" by St. South.

_She sits with one hand clasped around the dream catcher dangling from her necklace, wishing it would catch this nightmare and whisk her away to a better reality. In the lower level of the art gallery, the white walls make her feel like she's back in The Dark Room. There was a way out once, but now she's completely enclosed in a white room. Each frame on the wall in front of her is a picture of herself, expertly posed and captured by Jefferson. Drugged Max stares back at her with dewy eyes and partially parted lips. Confusion. A hint of fear._

_Chloe begs for help from miles away, her voice carried through the speaker of Max's phone set on the bench beside her. She's scared, and Max can't help her from here. But she listens, lets Chloe scream into the phone searching for comfort. She doesn't answer, but Chloe deserves to have her last moments heard._

_So she sits and she prays, looking at pictures of herself at her worst moment and listening to Chloe's terror in her worst moment. A tragedy they can share across states._

She jolts upright with a heaving gasp. A coat of cold sweat covers her skin and makes her feel in need of a shower. She kicks her blankets off and grabs her cell phone. 4 A.M.

With a sigh, she lays back on her bed and tosses her phone back onto her nightstand. Her first night back in Seattle ends with a nightmare, and there's no way she's going to tell Chloe about it. The last thing she wants is to hear Chloe's 'I told you so'.

"I can last two weeks on my own," she repeats, over and over like a mantra. Each time she says it, the less she believes it's true.

She knows it was probably a bad idea to come this far alone, but she couldn't deprive her parents of a family Christmas. At the same time, she couldn't drag Chloe out to Seattle. Not after Joyce's excitement for a Christmas where Chloe won't be trying to rip David's throat out with her teeth.

In the end, she's sleepless in Seattle with the one person who understands her full story miles away.

Giving up the thought of rest, she sets up her laptop on the wooden desk she left behind. At first, she intends to watch whatever dumb videos she finds that make her laugh. Once her browser is open, however, she pulls up every social media website on which she registered an account through the years and looks at the profiles of each friend she left behind in Seattle.

Their pages are covered in photos, bright smiles on each face. Their posts talk about little bits of happiness in their lives, or the average teenager complaints about homework and failing relationships. Things that fill her with envy over the gap between her problems and the problems of her old friends.

And they don't seem to miss her at all. Beyond the farewell posts months ago, she's not mentioned another time across any post. She closes her laptop, but the hole of emptiness tearing through her only intensifies. Meeting her friends again helped her make it through the car ride, but now she doesn't think she wants to bother with them.

She wants Chloe, Kate, and Warren. Friends who really care about her, and helped save her life.

She remains in her room, browsing websites to keep her mind occupied, until the scent of brewing coffee fills her room. With a glance at the clock, she heads downstairs. It's still early, but not 4 A.M. early.

When she steps into the kitchen, her mother greets her. "You're up already?"

"Guess I'm just not used to being home again," Max says.

"Give it a day or two. You'll be right back in the swing of things."

Max nods her thanks when her mom hands her a steaming cup of coffee and says, "Yeah, probably."

* * *

It's Christmas Eve and her mom stares intently into the mirror while she fastens her favorite pearl earrings into place, the ones her dad bought as an anniversary gift years ago. She puckers her lips to check their red coating again, wiping away smears with a tissue. "I don't understand, Max. You've always loved going to the Old Fashioned Christmas Party. You said being in the country made you feel like you were back in Arcadia."

"I know, and it always did," she says. Max shifts her weight from foot-to-foot in the doorway of her parents' room. "Just not anymore."

"I know you're at that age where it's not cool to hang out with your parents, but I promise you'll have fun."

"It's not that. It's just… it's held in a barn," Max says. She lowers her head, feeling childish at her excuse.

"It's never mattered to you before that it's held in a barn," her mom says. "That's part of it's charm. What makes it old fashioned."

"Where I was held in Arcadia was under a barn," Max whispers. "I don't feel ready to go back into one. Not yet."

Understanding washes over her mom's face as she pauses in her routine. "I'm sorry, Max. I didn't know," she says. She steps away from her mirror, walks to Max, and puts her hands on her shoulders. "Do you want us to stay home with you? We could watch a Christmas movie and have some hot cocoa. Whip up some popcorn or run and get some of those little cookie dough candy bites you love so much."

Max shakes her head. "No, Mom. I appreciate the offer, but you guys go and have fun. Then, tell me all about it when you get back. Like I'll have been there vicariously through you two."

"You're sure, Max? It's no big deal for us to skip. I don't want you to be alone like this," she says.

Max rolls her eyes with a small smile. "Yes, I'm sure. Go have fun, and I'll be just fine."

When they leave, her mom's farewell hug is extra tight and her smile a little tense, but Max soothes their concern as much as she can with constant insisting that she'll survive without them for a few hours.

After they're gone, she puts on her coat and boots and walks into the town. At first, her path is aimless. Moving for the sake of movement. It helps to clear her head a bit, now that her memories of The Dark Room cut deeper without Chloe's presence to numb them. She never realized Chloe's effect until it was too late. And although her confession brings Max to the present and fills her with warmth, the guilt that she was unable to return the sentiment at that time burrows deeper. She wanted to say it. Three simple words. But they sat on the tip of her tongue and refused to go farther.

She makes a turn and enters a building she never has before, the cathedral. It's large and quiet, a few people scattered among the pews and keeping to themselves in silent prayer. She finds a spot for herself and folds her hands in her lap. The stained glass windows tint the light that passes through their images of Jesus with his cross, angels, shepherds with their sheep. People whose heads are bowed. Others whose heads look to the sky with questions in their eyes. All the pictures she expected to see.

The altar up front is under a large crucifix and half hidden by a cloth. Every breath fills her lungs with the scent of some kind of incense. Maybe it's the myrrh or frankincense she always hears about, not that she's spent enough time in a church to know the difference between them. Either way, it doesn't cover the musk of candle wax with hints of too-floral perfume women sprayed a few too many times.

She takes a deep breath.

_I'm new to this prayer thing, so be lenient with me._ _I just want answers. Why do I have this power? What am I supposed to do?_ _What do my dreams mean? …_ _Why do I feel this gaping hole in my gut like something bad is moments away from happening?_

Her pew creaks when a priest sits beside her, an older man with his hair just beginning to grey. "I've never seen you here before," he says.

Max nods. "Yeah, I'm not a huge believer. My friend finds a lot of comfort in her faith, so I thought I'd give it a try."

"Faith is a strange thing," he says. "Everyone sees it in their own way and benefits from it differently. Sometimes talking about your problems to a higher power is enough to bring people peace."

"Are there people who don't benefit from it at all… Father?" Max asks.

"Certainly. Faith only helps as much as you allow it to. As a young man, I had plenty of questions about the world and my beliefs. My faith wavered more times than I could count."

"Did you ever find the answers to your questions?"

"Some of them," the priest admits. "Others I'm still looking for their answers and some I don't believe have an answer at all. What questions are troubling you so much, child? I see the pain so deep in your eyes."

Max shrugs. "Something bad happened to my friend and I. I feel like I'm to blame for part of it." She pauses. "Maybe there aren't answers for me either."

The priest lays his hand on her shoulder. "It's not my place to ask about your situation, but the Lord forgives all those who seek forgiveness."

He stands and leaves her with that. Maybe she expected peace to wash over her along with sudden enlightenment, but the world feels just as dark and cruel as it did minutes before. She knows she could never have saved Rachel, but what about Kate? What if she paid a little more attention a little earlier to everything going on at Blackwell instead of focusing on not being the geek?

She leaves the cathedral feeling that the eyes of each stained glass image and portrait are watching her.

* * *

Her parents come home late, buzzed and full of giggles. They stop at her room for a quick goodnight before retiring. She shakes her head, borderline angry with herself. Her parents always drink at that dumb party and she's gotten them home safe every year since receiving her license. She should have done the same this year, but let her fear control her.

"If you hadn't poked your nose where it didn't belong, none of this would have happened."

She whips her head around, expecting to see Jefferson, but she's alone in her room. With the heels of her hands, she digs into her eyes. She's tired and imagining things, she tells herself. She turns out the light and lays in bed, keeping her breaths steady. As a child, she'd stare at her ceiling for hours at night, looking at the glow in the dark stickers that used to be there. Over the years, they peeled off from age.

Still, the words she heard in a perfect mimic of his voice echo through her head until it feels like it's splitting apart. One touch under her nose lets her know that it's bleeding.

"What's happening to me?" she asks the darkness.

* * *

She plasters on a smile for Christmas. Despite how much she loves Joyce's cooking, a meal made by her own mother tastes a little more special. She suspects that her own parents are watching her a little too closely after she brought up The Dark Room to them for the first time in months, but they don't pry.

In the days following, she finds a photo taken by her mom of when she was filling out an application to Blackwell Academy, the school that had been her dream for years. She keeps it on her nightstand now, continually glancing at it and wondering if she should go back and tear the application apart.

She knows, deep down, that it wouldn't matter much. She'd only save herself. Chloe would still be abandoned by Rachel and her. Kate would still be taken and hurt by Jefferson. Nathan wouldn't have an end in sight for the nightmare into which he was born. She'd still remember it all too. No matter how tempting it is to run from this, nothing would really change for her. She can't run from her memories.

She tears apart the photo and leaves it in her trash can.

Chloe calls most nights, and several times during the day. She's bored out of her mind, and Max laughs at her. Chloe fakes irritation, then admits that she's streamed more hours of television since Max left than she has in her entire life with only a couple of empty beer bottles to keep her company. Max still has no idea how she drinks the stuff.

"It doesn't feel the same without you," Chloe says over the phone one day. "Remember when we were kids and we wasted away entire days in front of the TV?"

"I remember. Though I can't believe some of the shows we used to watch. Looking back now, they seem so stupid."

Some of Max's best memories were from sitting on the couch with Chloe, both of them enthralled by whatever mind-numbing program they flipped to. Chloe's horrible impressions often coaxed a laugh or two from Max, who gave her shit that she should never try being an actress. Those were the days where they believed they could take over Arcadia Bay simply by being friends. Days when Chloe's hair had yet to be dyed away from its blonde and Max's still fell passed her shoulders. They didn't even know what the Prescotts were doing so close to their home. They were still innocent.

"They were stupid," Chloe agrees. "But so were we at the time. Kids usually are."

It takes several minutes, and many giggles, for Chloe to ask, "How are you doing, Max?"

"I'm surviving," Max says. "I didn't realize how much having you around helps, but at least I promise that I'm never leaving your side for very long ever again. Ever."

"Fine with me. To be fair, I didn't want you to go alone in the first place."

"You know how much it meant to your mom to have a family holiday without her daughter trying to murder her husband."

"Yeah, I get it. Happy family and all that. But you're family too, Max. You should have been here."

Max rolls her eyes, even if Chloe can't see it. "You know my parents wanted to see me again."

"Doesn't mean I have to like it," Chloe says in a sing-song voice.

"I'll be back in, like, a week, Chloe. Go spend some time with your family. Or keep binge watching TV."

Chloe laughs. "I can do that. Take care, Max. Call me immediately if you start dropping your marbles all over the floor. Again."

"Funny. I'll call you if I need you."

"You better."

* * *

One day before she leaves for Arcadia, Kate texts Max. Max expects it to be about her new relationship with Warren, something Chloe told Max a lot about considering Chloe witnessed them together all over the town.

Kate: I thought you went back to Seattle for the holidays?

Max pauses and spends a long minute staring at Kate's message. What could prompt her sweet friend to ask whether or not she left, especially when she's prepping to return the next day?

Max: Yeah. My parents are driving me back tomorrow.

Kate: Oh, sorry! I swore I saw you around the dorms today. Guess you have a doppelganger running around, Max. Lol.

Max: Ha. I think the world only needs one of me. I'll see you tomorrow, Kate. Grats on your relationship with Warren. I thought you 2 might get together.

Kate: Thanks, but who told you?

Max: Chloe

Kate: Of course. See you soon, Max. Have a safe trip back

Max turns the screen of her phone off and looks at her reflection. Maybe Kate did mistake someone who looks similar for her, but is it possible that she has something a little more than a doppelganger running around Arcadia?

"Madness is a disease, Max. And I infected both you and little Kate."

"You're not really here, Jefferson," Max says, looking around her room just to be sure. She finds no trace of him, but swears she heard his voice crystal clear.

"I'm not that easy to get rid of," he says. His voice fades a little more with each word until the final one is merely a whisper.

* * *

She doesn't sleep that night, instead sleeping in the car on the way back to Arcadia. Her parents play old CD's of their favorite songs, most of which were recorded long before Max's birth. Sometimes she'd hear the lyrics in her dreams from hearing them when she napped on long car rides.

Then her mom is shaking her awake. "We're here," she says.

Max rubs her eyes and faces Blackwell's girls' dormitories. "Could you take me to Chloe's house instead?" she asks. "I've practically been having a permanent sleepover with her. Just like old times, you know?"

Her mom barely looks surprised and straps her seat belt back on. "Sure. Same place?"

"Same place," Max confirms. "It looks a little more run-down now, but it hasn't changed on the inside. Just like Chloe herself."

"I'm glad you reconnected with her," her mom says. "You two were inseparable and we worried about what would happen when we dragged you away to Seattle."

Her dad lets out a hefty sigh, tapping his sausage fingers against the steering wheel. "I'm still sorry about that, kiddo. I know you loved the city, but you had to leave a lot behind for it."

"Neither of you have to be sorry about it. I know we left because Dad's job moved. Yeah, I had to say goodbye to some things, but I gained so many new experiences living in Seattle. Honestly, if I was thirteen again and it was completely my choice, I would move to Seattle again. Except I would keep in contact with Chloe and maybe visit her too."

Her parents leave her with tight hugs and Chloe is more than thrilled to usher her back into the Price Home. Joyce and David left hours ago for a date night, trying to enjoy themselves before the mess of parties that accompany New Year's Eve.

Chloe tosses Max's suitcase to the side of her room and flops onto her bed. "Ready to talk, Max?"


	12. Afterlife

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I do not own Life is Strange or the song "Afterlife" by XYLO.

Chloe's eyes hold a glimmer Max hasn't seen in years. The excitement of a child on Christmas morning, waiting to tear apart colorful wrapping into strips of holiday confetti. "Don't keep me in suspense," she says, "you might actually kill me."

They're probably fucking in Heaven right about now.

Flash.

"I've never heard of someone dying from suspense."

"It's called 'old age' and you're avoiding the question," she says.

Max sits beside her on the bed. "I know. I'm sorry. It's just been a weird couple of weeks."

Chloe presses her lips into a thin line and slouches, resting her forearms on her knees. She nods a few times. "All right. I guess we'll put this conversation on hold for now… Again. Weird how?"

"Well, my nightmares returned first. Those I could handle. It wasn't anything extraordinarily new."

"Right, nightmares," Chloe says, agitation clear in her voice. She won't even look at Max. "You mentioned them maybe once while you were gone. Please, continue with what you decided to hide from me while you were gone."

Max raises her fingertips to her head and rubs small circles over her temples. "I know you're frustrated, Chloe, but what were you going to do? You were in a different state, so how could you have helped me if I told you what was wrong? You would have just worried."

"I don't know," Chloe says, each word dripping with sarcasm. "Maybe talked you through it or gotten in my car and drove there."

"I get it, Chloe. I really do," Max says. "You're pissed at me. Hell, I'm pissed at me, too. For a lot of reasons, and this isn't even at the top of the list, believe me. But just give me a few minutes, Chloe, because I think something is going on and it scares me."

Chloe takes a deep breath and pinches the bridge of her nose, an action Max has witnessed more times than she cared to count over the years. "I thought we were in this together, Max. I thought you were going to let me help you."

"We are," Max says. "I am."

"Are you sure, Max? Because if you keep hiding things, I can't help you."

"I'm telling you now," she says quietly. That has to count for something.

Chloe takes another deep breath and Max hears her count down from ten in soft murmurs. "I know. Just continue."

"Kate asked if I decided to stay in Arcadia over the holidays because she saw me around the dorms," Max says.

"So she saw someone who looked kind of like you. That's not a big deal," Chloe says. "It's probably nothing."

"And if it's not just nothing?" Max asks. She can't shake the feeling that there's a problem with the timelines in some way, and it's her fault for all of the tampering she's done.

"Then we deal with it when we have to. Next."

"I'm… afraid of barns now," Max says, feeling childish the second the words leave her mouth.

Chloe stares at her for a long minute with her mouth hanging open. "Where did that one come from?"

Max says, "I used to go to a Christmas party in Seattle every year with my parents, kind of an old fashioned theme. When it came time for us to go, I panicked. I couldn't get passed the thought of stepping into the barn and finding the door to The Dark Room under all of the straw."

"Even though you know The Dark Room is in a completely different state?" Chloe asks.

Max nods. "I never said it was a reasonable fear."

"Right. Is there anything _else_ you wanted to tell me?"

Max knows she must be pushing Chloe's patience to its absolute limit. The amount of effort she's giving Max—world's worst best friend—is not only astonishing, but Max has no idea where to start showing Chloe how much she appreciates it. How she's so sorry she never realized that Chloe piecing her together with safety pins and scotch tape is all that keeps her tethered to her shaky reality until it was too late and she started falling apart again.

"This one is incredibly recent," she starts. "And I mean, like, the past day or two."

She takes Chloe's silence as her cue to continue. "I heard Jefferson talk to me a couple times. Sometimes, I see him in the corner of my vision. When I look, he's gone again."

"You know Jefferson is locked up awaiting trial, right? You know he can't get you again?" Chloe's tone isn't mean or angry, more like she's trying to beat facts into Max's head like a mother assuring her child that, no, there are no monsters in the closet. Yes, she's sure. Yes, she'll check one more time. Just in case.

"Of course I know that." Max fights the urge to roll her eyes. Frustration is getting the better of both of them. "But it still feels real when it happens."

Chloe keeps quiet. Max fidgets a bit while she waits for a response, but she knows this is a lot to process. If only it didn't have to be about her.

"Do you hear or see him right now?" she finally asks.

"No," Max says, a little too quickly judging from the look Chloe shoots her. "Honestly. It's only happened once or twice, and not at all since I've gotten back."

"What does he say?"

Whatever response she expected from Chloe, this isn't it. Max shrugs. "Something about madness being a disease, and he infected Kate and me."

Chloe nods a few times, looking a little more… not-furious than Max anticipated. "Okay," she says.

"Okay?" Max echoes.

"PTSD was always a possibility from this," Chloe says. "And at least that's normal. It can be dealt with and it's common. It's not guesswork or a crazy secret that should be impossible."

"And if it's not PTSD or some kind of crazy?"

"We deal with it then, if it comes to that."

Chloe cracks open another beer, knocking an empty bottle over as she kicks her feet up onto the coffee table. She takes a sip and lets out a relaxed sigh.

Max sits next to her with a soda and pushes the beer bottle away when Chloe offers her a sip. Chloe laughs. Max rolls her eyes.

* * *

They haven't said much after their conversation about what Max hid. The guilt that the tension is her fault weighs on Max. She's certain Chloe knows it, too. She went back on her words again. While Chloe is doing her best to mask her feelings, Max sees the dejection shining in her eyes. She sees the way Chloe moves a little slower.

But the biggest clue comes from Chloe drinking from David's stash of beer.

"This shit's not even good," Chloe complains, taking another swig. "No one would ever be able to get drunk off of it. Hell, I'd be surprised to see someone buzzed due to this utter crap. It's like glorified water."

"Then why are you still drinking it?" Max asks.

Chloe shrugs one shoulder. "I don't know. Doesn't hurt to try."

They share a delivery pizza—pepperoni and extra grease, Max remembers why she hates the pizza place they ordered from. Whatever recipe or method they used left the pizza crust flimsy and overly saturated in grease, which often drips everywhere.

Max's stomach feels heavy, but she knows it's not the food causing it. Chloe clearly has no issues with their dinner, biting monstrous amounts at a time, only to yell at the TV and spit crumbs everywhere.

They watch the New York City New Year's Eve celebration, mocking artists singing pop songs they both hate. Not every sing needs to be about sex and partying, but Max feels someone forgot to mention that to the pop industry.

Fine, she'll admit there are exceptions and some pop songs really aren't that bad.

It's these little distractions allowing them to sit side-by-side in peace and ignore the tension building from unspoken words.

She feels a hand on her shoulder and Jefferson whispers in her ear, "Suffer."

She brushes her shoulder, trying to get rid of the tingles left by the phantom hand. Logically, she knows Jefferson wasn't there. He physically can't be near her, especially not at Chloe's house and with Chloe right next to her. Still, it just feels so real.

And Chloe notices. And Chloe's staring at her with that you-better-start-talking look.

"I, uh, felt him touch my shoulder," Max says.

"How do you know it was him?"

"He also whispered 'suffer' into my ears," Max says. The words come out mechanically, but if it had been her choice, she wouldn't have told Chloe. What difference will it make?

Chloe's lips form a thin line and she stares at Max, though Max isn't sure what she's trying to find until she says, "You're surprisingly calm about this."

It's the last thing Max thought she'd hear, and she bursts out laughing because of it. Chloe's confusion only makes her laugh harder.

"Okay," Chloe says, slowly. "So, we _are_ dealing with crazy here. Normal, possibly treatable crazy."

Max shakes her head, calming herself. "It's just… I was expecting you to be, I don't know, angry? And what you said was the last thing I imagined would come out of your mouth."

They fall back into a silence, watching people in New York party to singers adding their sultry voices to upbeat music. It's still a little tense between them, but Max's crazy eased most of it. Although, she catches Chloe shooting worried glances at her more than once.

By the time it's almost midnight in New York, the crowd on TV hardly contains their excitement. New Year. New beginnings. A chance at a clean slate. A chance to be that better person you've always promised yourself you'd become.

"You got a New Year's resolution, Max?" Chloe asks.

Max says, "I don't know. I haven't thought about it much. I guess just work on fixing everything. You?"

Chloe finishes the rest of her beer and shrugs. "Just keep working on finishing high school. Maybe get accepted to a college, if I'm lucky."

"What would you go for?"

"Art, maybe. Remember when we used to make our own little comic books? I wouldn't mind doing something like that for a living."

"I'm surprised it's not a science field you're looking at," Max says.

"I like science," Chloe says, "but I'm not sure I would want a career in it. I want to do something I enjoy, and research, no matter the subject, is not part of that list."

"I understand that. I like English, but I'd never want a career in it," Max says.

The party-goers on TV start their countdown from ten, waiting for the ball to drop and start a new year. Their excitement seeps into the Price living room. Chloe sits up a little straighter, her eyes bright. Max feels a little lighter, like the world took a break from sitting on her shoulders.

The ball drops and everyone on the screen cheers—hell, Max almost joins in, too. It's easy to get swept up in the joy and emotion, no matter how far it's broadcast from. This is what she tells herself. It's the emotion. The feeling of thousands of light hearts flying away like birds set free from their cages.

She shifts closer to Chloe, putting a hand on either side of her best friend's face, and finds their lips locked. Chloe's eyebrows raise so high, Max wonders if they'll meld with her hairline. For the first time, beer doesn't taste quite as awful.

She wanted her New Year's resolution to be to tell Chloe everything she needs to, but can never push passed the threshold of her lips. Instead, she'll let her lips do the talking. She thinks Chloe gets the message.

It's brief, but no less meaningful. When they pull apart, Chloe opens and closes her mouth a few times. Max speaks instead. "Happy New Year, Chloe."

"It's not midnight yet" is all she says in reply.

Max tilts her head towards the TV. "It is there."

She whispers, "Happy New Year, Max."

* * *

She finds herself in the Two Whales Diner again. The bathroom mirror is shattered, its pieces jagged and scattered on the dingy tiled floor. When she leaves, instead of the usual fresh-brewed coffee scent flooding the main part of the diner, it smells like rain water. The entire area feels too humid. Too heavy.

She sloshes through the layer of water, branches, and debris on the floor. Just as she expects, there's a table full of… herself. It's not until she walks closer that she notices one of the Maxes is missing—the one with Chloe's jacket. The one left in the worst situation. Chloe, Victoria, Nathan—all dead. Arcadia destroyed by a storm. Nothing left.

One explains before Max even asks. "One Max per timeline. You think this is just a dream, but it isn't. Not really. More of a meeting place. A crossroad between timelines. The only crossroad."

"What does that mean? The missing one is in a different timeline with one of us?"

Another one nods, the one with a blue dress. "Yes. Not mine. She was here, but not anymore."

"How do you know?"

"Well, she sought me out. She seemed disappointed that I was just another copy left behind," Blue Dress explains. "After awhile, your power reawakens inside of us. She figured it out first."

" _What makes you special and not us?"_

She remembers their anger towards her for leaving them behind. For being the only one with the ability that stuck them all in this situation in the first place. No wonder they're docile now. If they have some sort of power as well, they got their wishes granted.

"Why is she jumping around timelines? _How_ is she jumping around timelines?"

She looks at each copy of herself, but they all give the same answer: a shrug. "Would you even tell me if you knew?" she asks, suspecting that their distrust and hatred towards her still lingers.

Their silence in her answer.

"Right," she says. "Well, how do I get out of here? I've never been the best at forcing myself to wake up from dreams."

More silence.

"Maybe leave the diner?" one offers. Green Jacket. "It seems to be the focal point. We're all drawn here."

A smile tugs at Max's lips. "Of course. Some of our best memories take place here."

_Chloe lets her head drop onto the booth's table. "Come on," she whines. "I don't remember him covering any of this material in class."_

_Max glances at Chloe's half-complete history assignment. "If you stayed awake in class, you wouldn't have this issue."_

" _History is too boring. It's all happened already, why do I need to know it?"_

_Max rolls her eyes. They have this same conversation every night history homework is assigned. Chloe hates the class, but her constant arguing with the teacher—when she's not sleeping—makes it worse. She often walks out of class with an extra assignment._

_Max, of course, relents to Chloe's whining and slides her own history assignment over. "Fine, copy mine," she says. "But I get to copy your science homework."_

_Chloe grins wide and bright. "Deal."_

Each Max looks lost in their own bit of nostalgia, and Max can't help but wonder if they all chose the same memory. Are they really the same person, or have they all deviated and become their own identity? With all the time spent at the diner, she has endless memories with Chloe. They always ended up there after school to wait for Joyce to drive them home, but really they wanted delicious food to sate the gnawing hunger only a day at school could create.

"We've had some good times here," Max in the striped cardigan says. The one living in a timeline where Max overdosed Chloe, as per her wishes.

The rest of them nod their agreement with bittersweet smiles.

Max leaves then, following the advice about trying to wake up. The somber feeling lingering in the diner from their conversation weighs heavily on her conscience, and she fears that if she stays too much longer, the guilt will suffocate her.

She pushes through the diner's doors to find herself standing on the cliff beside the lighthouse. The storm is back and gusts of wind whip her short hair in every direction. One glance forwards confirms her fear. The tornado swirls above the water again, its brutal winds ready and willing to tear apart Arcadia Bay board-by-board. It looks like night with the storm clouds so dark in the sky, lighting up only when lightning crackles through them.

She swears she sees the Max who was missing from the diner, Chloe's bullet necklace clutched tight in her white knuckles. She glances over her shoulder at Max, eyes bright with a cocktail of emotion Max can't begin to unravel.

In a blink, she's gone. Max stands alone overlooking what she prevented, wondering if she'll have to try and save Arcadia again. Wondering if she'd be able to save Arcadia again, considering she's not entirely sure how she managed the first time around.

Lost in thought, she notices the boat swept from the water and thrown into the lighthouse far too late. The light at the top of the structure—the very one meant to safely guide boats home—falls straight towards her, and she raises her arms up to block an impact that will kill her no matter what she does at this point.

* * *

She wakes to a headache threatening to tear her skull to pieces, only vaguely aware of Chloe's presence beside her. When she manages to pry her eyes open, everything is covered in pinkish-red webbing. It reminds her of pictures from her biology book, but she can't concentrate through the pain long enough to remember what those pictures were of.

"Shit," she murmurs.

Reality is splitting apart and she knows. It's why Kate thought she was still in Arcadia. Another Max slipped into this timeline, and she's messing with something. Something with enough power to affect Max without being near her.

_What am I supposed to do?_


	13. Afraid

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I do not own Life is Strange or the song "Afraid" by The Neighbourhood.

Max still thinks of her dream—if she can call it that—while sitting at breakfast with Chloe the next morning. Its tendrils nestled deep in her brain, it won't leave her alone. The massive headache to which she awoke and the certainty that she's not the only Max in this timeline do nothing to ease her apprehension. Rather, they make it worse. Judging by Chloe's furrowed brow and worried glances, she's not hiding her feelings well at all.

"Did you want to go have breakfast at the Two Whales instead?" Chloe asks.

Max shakes her head. "You aren't Joyce, but your pancakes are all right," she says. She stabs a few pieces with her fork and shovels them into her mouth to prove her point.

Chloe still looks unconvinced, but she at least starts picking at her own serving. "So, are we, like, a thing now?" she asks.

Her question sets Max's face aflame, coloring it a deep red, but she manages to keep her voice steady. "Yeah," she says. She quickly adds, "Unless you don't want to be."

"No, no. I definitely want to be. I'm curious how your parents will take it, though."

Max shrugs one shoulder. "Shouldn't matter to them. Love's not about gender. It's about finding someone you want to spend the rest of your life exploring the world with."

"'Rest of your life exploring the world with'? Man, Max, that's one hell of a commitment. Not sure I'm ready for that step just yet," Chloe says, adding a wink at the end. She drops the playful demeanor. "We'll take it slow, Max and we'll fix your mind together."

Max clears her throat. "What about Joyce?" she asks.

Chloe laughs a bit. "I'd be surprised if she hasn't already figured it out after me and Rachel."

"I bet they're still fucking in Heaven in another timeline," Jefferson whispers in her ear.

She shoves a forkful of pancakes in her mouth and tries to ignore him. Focus on chewing. Focus on anything else. "Can't believe we go back to school tomorrow," she says with her mouth still full, anything to change the subject. "Went by pretty quick."

"Maybe for you. Binge watching TV doesn't make time fly, at least not for me. Feels like break has stretched on forever," Chloe says.

_Your break wasn't spent running from nightmares and ghosts made up by your own mind,_ Max retorts mentally. She reigns in her burst of anger, they don't need to fight right now. It'd just be so much easier if her head didn't feel like it's on the verge of ripping into two pieces. Or if Jefferson would _shut the fuck up_ and stop whispering in her ear. Hell, she'd settle for a couple hours of dreamless sleep, if it wasn't too much to ask.

"Sometimes boring isn't a bad thing," Max says. She's trying to keep herself together for now, but she's so tired and can't figure out what she's supposed to do about her clone running around. "Can I ask you a question?"

Chloe says, "What? Do you actually think I'm going to say 'no' to that? Just ask."

"It's called being polite. Will you always be able to know that I'm me?"

"Uh, are you high, Max? What does that even mean?" Chloe asks, then her eyes narrow. "Max, is this about your dreams with the copies—or whatever you called them—of yourself?"

Max shrugs and doesn't answer. Chloe rolls her eyes. "We talked about this. Your mind is scrambled right now, but we'll fix it."

"It was different this time," Max says. "Different like my tornado visions. It felt real, you know? And I could feel it was real. I saw, well, myself at the lighthouse. She knew I was there, too. She looked at me."

"Okay," Chloe starts slowly, "let's say that it is another vision, or whatever. What do you want to do about it?"

"I want to know if you will always be able to tell that I'm the real me. Or this timeline's version of me, I guess."

_Chloe has her gun cocked and pointed, shifting it between two Maxes._

" _I'm the real Max," Bullet Necklace Max insists._

_Max feels tears on her cheeks, leaving behind hot trails, and she shakes her head. "C'mon, Chloe. I'm Max."_

" _Don't make me choose," Chloe begs. "I don't… I don't know. I can't tell."_

_She settles with the gun focused on Max. "I'm so sorry," she says. She pulls the trigger, and Max catches Bullet Necklace Max smirking before the world goes dark._

Max gulps down half of her glass of orange juice to chase away her thoughts.

"Of course, I'll always know you're you," Chloe assures.

Max sees the sincerity in her eyes, but it takes more than sincerity and self-confidence to tell apart two identical people. "But how?" she presses. "How will you know for sure?"

"What? Do you want to decide on a safe word or something?" she asks. "I thought we were taking things slow."

"Ha. Ha. Joking aside, Chloe, why not have some sort of password that only we know?"

"Like what?"

Max shrugs.

Chloe's mouth quirks into a smirk beneath mischievous eyes. "How about 'It's not midnight yet'?" she asks.

Just the phrase brings back the memory of their kiss. Even if they haven't talked much about it, she knew they both felt the shift in their relationship from best friends to something more. And it felt so natural, so right, that Max wonders what took them so long to make it to this point in the first place.

"It is there," Max replies, just like the first time. "That's brilliant, Chloe."

"I have my moments, thank you."

Max rolls her eyes and lightly taps her foot against Chloe's shin under the table in a mock kick.

"Someone's feeling frisky today," Chloe teases.

"Shut up, Chloe," Max says, knowing she'll never be able to hide her blush.

Chloe tries to kick her back under the table, but misses and hits the wooden leg next to Max's leg. The sharp sounds cuts through the air and Max sits up straight, her spine so rigid, she thought it might crack.

Chloe points her gun at the wrong Max. Right Max?

Flash.

Jefferson has two guns, one pointing at each Max.

Flash.

She's at the lighthouse. A bang, then darkness.

Flash.

"Woah. Take it easy, Max." It's Chloe's voice that pulls her back to reality. It's always Chloe's voice. "You okay?"

They both know she's not okay, but Max appreciates the opportunity to avoid talking about it right now. She still feels the wind blowing her hair and the rain pelting her skin. Even the blinding light from the lighthouse seems to linger in her peripheral vision. It's supposed to be a sign of safety, a comfort that's been one of the few constants since her childhood.

"I know there's another Max here, Chloe," Max says. "I can _feel_ it, and it hurts."

She meets Chloe's eyes, and Chloe smiles. She tries so hard to create a reassuring facade, anything to mask the helpless fear burning in her eyes.

But she tries, and Max returns her hesitant smile because she _knows_. She knows how difficult it has to be walking on egg shells around her because she's always on the verge of completely losing it. She knows that most people would walk away or have her committed, if only to alleviate themselves of the burden. She knows Chloe doesn't have to put up with any of this madness, but she chooses to.

And she left Chloe five years ago. Her dad's job was part of the choice, sure, but she chose to leave for the city where she lost herself in dreams when Chloe suffered the loss of her father.

"No, I'm not okay," Max admits, "but I'm trying to get there."

Chloe reaches across the table to take Max's hand in her own and squeeze it, the simple gesture communicating more words than either of them could find time to speak.

* * *

School becomes easier each day she shows up. As she makes new, happier memories, she fools herself into pretending that Jefferson never taught there. A cowardly approach, she knows this, but it works.

The hardest part of the day is waiting for Chloe's mid-morning class to finish so they can go to lunch, and Max is always starving and berating herself for not bringing a snack to hold her over. On warmer days, she spends this time sitting on the edge of the fountain in front of Blackwell. Such a luxury eludes her on the cold days, where it's uncomfortable to sit outside unless you enjoy frostbite.

She spends those cold days feeling more like a caged bird than a student as she waits in the library—it's across from Chloe's classroom, so why not? Though she should do homework, she passes the time by staring out one of the many large windows that swallow an entire section of wall, counting the minutes until Chloe comes to open her cage and free her to the world once again.

There's a light layer of fresh snow coating the ground outside and the window sill. As far as she could see, not a single print or indent marred its precious white surface. Looking at it with tainted eyes makes her feel like a sinner. How can she deserve such innocence to be in her life?

A saran wrapped sandwich flops itself in front of her, guided by the perfectly manicured hands of Victoria Chase, who slips into the chair across from Max. Max looks between Victoria and the sandwich.

"It's not going to hurt you, Max," Victoria says. "I could hear your stomach growling a mile away, but you weren't going to get food without Chloe, were you?"

Max shakes her head with a sheepish smile. "I always tell myself I should pack a snack, but I end up forgetting to. So, thanks."

Victoria shrugs. "Don't worry about it. I've never been great with the whole 'being nice to others' deal, but you looked like a cross between a starving orphan and a kicked puppy, so it was difficult to avoid doing something."

Max laughs softly and unwraps the sandwich. "Peanut butter?" she asks.

Victoria shifts in her seat and avoids looking at Max, trying to seem uninterested. Somehow, Max sees through it. She's nervous about Max's reaction, and Max is more than amused at this. "I figured it was the safest option since I don't exactly know your preferences."

"I actually love peanut butter sandwiches," Max admits. "They make me feel like a kid again. Back when my biggest worry was finding a way to get out of eating my broccoli so I could have dessert."

Victoria relaxes and a small smile graces her face. "That sounds kinda nice," she says. "When I was a kid, I ate whatever gourmet crap our chef cooked. Most of the dishes I couldn't even pronounce the names of. I know every meal was supposed to be the best of my life, that people would kill to be able to eat like I did. But it always felt like something was missing, and nothing tasted right."

"Love was missing."

"You have no idea."

Max takes a few bites of her sandwich. It's a little cold—the school keeps most of their food on refrigerated shelves to increase its lifespan—but better than keeping her stomach empty. She remembers sitting with Chloe in elementary school at lunch, ignoring her proposals for various trades to try and get Max's cookie. Chloe would sulk for all of 5 minutes before Max would relent and give her half of the cookie. In the end, that was always good enough for Chloe.

"Nathan told me you visited him. He really needed to know there are more people than just his sister and me looking out for him," Victoria says.

Max nods. "What happened, I don't hold it against him. We both ended up trapped in nightmares and helped each other escape."

"Things used to be so simple," Victoria says. "When I was a kid, everything was either black or white. 'Do this' and 'don't do that' and clear cut instructions for any situation. Then, I came to Blackwell and started drowning in grey. I still don't know what to do with grey."

The transition from white to black to grey.

Flash.

Max has a connection with Nathan now, but she won't tell Victoria that. She's not sure she'd understand anyway.

Someone told her once about a quote that talks about staring into an abyss, and the abyss staring back. She knows now that quote isn't quite right if the abyss is referring to evil. When she looked into the face of true evil, it didn't just look back. It invaded her mind, dug tendrils into her brain and refuses to let go, even after all this time.

"You're way too deep in thought for eating a peanut butter sandwich," Victoria says.

Max shrugs one shoulder. "Just thinking about what you said. About black and white and grey."

"What about it?"

"You're right," Max says. "Things would be so simple in all black or all white. Honestly, I don't think there exists something that is only black or only white. I think grey is all we have. We just call the darker shades black and the lighter ones white, but in the end, they're all grey."

"Maybe," Victoria says, "but I'd like to believe there's white somewhere."

* * *

She starts going to church on Sunday mornings with Kate—who's more than happy to have her tag along. Like the sweet girl she's always been, Kate doesn't mind Max admitting to not really sharing her beliefs and looking more for peace than solace. If there is white in the world deviating from the grey, it's in Kate Marsh's heart.

Chloe offers to join them, but Max declines. Forcing Chloe, despite her offer—which Max knows stems more from needing to show support than actually wanting to go—would only lead to an agitated Chloe, no matter how hard she would try to hide it. Her faith died with her father.

When she walks into the vestibule, she expects a divine act to strike her down. God. His angels. Doesn't matter. Surely, they must want to rid their holy house of this tainted creature who messes with the natural order of their world.

She never burns in holy fire when she enters.

The holy water doesn't sting upon contact with her skin.

No hellhounds come to usher her into Hell.

She almost wishes they would. How many lives did she damn across infinitely many timelines? Enough to damn herself, she figures.

Kate likes to take her to a quiet room tucked away that's filled with candles and padded kneelers. She'll take one of the long sticks and hand another to Max, explaining that people come to light the candles in memory of those who've passed on from this life to the next. A memorial, of sorts, no matter how short lived it may be.

Max goes back to that little room alone during the week and lights every unlit candle.

In a world of grey, her heart's almost black. But it's still a dozen shades lighter than Jefferson's.

* * *

For the next few nights, her dreams fall into one of a few categories:

1\. Meeting the other Maxes at the Two Whales, but not learning anything new from them. Most times, they have nothing to say anymore.

2\. She stares down Bullet Necklace Max, each holding a gun pointing at the other. Max never fires, but Bullet Necklace Max barely hesitates to fire and the dream ends when the bullet hits.

3\. Max and Bullet Necklace Max stand side-by-side by the lighthouse with either Chloe or Jefferson in front and aiming a gun at one of them. Chloe always shoots the wrong Max. Jefferson always shoots both Maxes.

Just like she knows she'll have one of these nightmares, she also knows that Chloe will be right next to her and ready to comfort her when she wakes. She stays awaking, whispering sweet words into her ears, until Max falls back asleep. In the morning, Chloe never complains about being woken up in the middle of the night. She never complains about being tired in the morning, brushing off the fact that she's added an extra cup or two or coffee to her breakfast routine.

Max wonders what took her so long to realize the depth of her bond with Chloe, the one so much deeper than simple friendship than either imagined at first. Yet it was always there.

Their small comfort is that no one seems to have encountered Max's clone running around. While Chloe insists it was just a freak coincidence, that there's no other Max besides Max. As much as she wishes to believe that, Max knows it's not true. She feels the other Max's presence, even if she's miles away and trying to live her own life in this timeline—which Max highly doubts, but hopes for nonetheless.

One morning, Chloe decides to turn the TV on while they eat breakfast. Max's nightmares were particularly exhausting the night before, and neither of them feel much like talking about it. Max figures that, at this point, Chloe already has an understanding about what Max saw in her sleep. It's easier that way.

Max doesn't want to explain how, this time, it was two Chloes standing at the lighthouse. She doesn't want to say that she held the gun, and she was the one who couldn't tell which Chloe was her Chloe. She definitely doesn't want to tell Chloe that she ended the dream by turning the gun on herself.

She prefers no life over a life spent wondering if the Chloe she spared was the correct one.

Chloe coughs, almost choking on her coffee, and pulls Max from her thoughts.

"Chloe?"

Chloe shakes her head and points at the TV screen, where the news is emitting a gentle drone of words filled with false inflections to draw in viewers.

By the time Max understands what Chloe means, the news anchors have moved on to the next story. She turned back to Chloe. "What?"

Chloe clears her throat. "They just had a preview for a news story," she says. She's talking too quickly from what Max thinks might be excitement. "I can't believe this."

"Get to the point, Chloe. Please. You're kind of scaring me. Are they legalizing marijuana or something?"

"Even better." Chloe meets Max's eyes and grins. "Mark Jefferson was found dead in his cell while awaiting trial."


	14. Anaesthetic

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't own Life is Strange or the song Anaesthetic by Thomston.

Chloe brings her laptop down from her room, and Max is too shocked to continue eating her breakfast. Instead, she watches Chloe's eyes scan words on the screen, forcing herself to breath while she waits to hear what Chloe finds.

"Well, this isn't freaky at all," Chloe says, her voice saturated with sarcasm. "The good news is that Jefferson is definitely one hundred percent dead."

"And the bad news?" Max prompts.

"The bad news is more like weird news. It says that he died of a gunshot wound to the head."

"People get shot all the time."

Chloe shakes her head, her eyebrows dipped low in her confusion. "The security cameras don't show anyone other than the guards having been in the area of his cell, and they certainly don't show anyone shooting one of the prisoners."

"That is pretty weird," Max admits, "but doesn't it also kind of sound impossible? Maybe someone messed with the security tapes or something."

"Doesn't say anything about that, but the news is still, well, new. I imagine it'll be updated throughout the day and probably through the next week at least."

Max watches Chloe read through every article she finds, her eyes greedily drinking in any information about Jefferson's unusual death. This is the Chloe she remembers from before William's death. A girl whose thirst for knowledge could never be satiated. To see that girl still exists deep within Chloe is nostalgic, and a relief. No matter what happens to them or between them, somethings never really change.

Other things do change. A year ago, Max would've cried her eyes out at such news. With how much she admired and looked up to Jefferson, his death would have devastated her. One simple year, and so much has changed that the death—or more likely murder—of her once-idol doesn't so much as bring a tear to her eye. There's no sadness or despair lurking in her heart.

"You know," she says, drawing Chloe's full attention to herself, "I thought that maybe I would be glad when he died because of what he did. Not just to me, but to Kate, Rachel, and all those other girls. I thought that I might feel like justice had been served. Like I was avenged in some way and the world was trying to make right one of its many wrongs. But I don't feel any of that. In fact, I don't feel much at all besides an aching numbness."

Chloe's lips purse into a thin line, her eyes flutter their attention between Max and her laptop's screen, and she idly taps her fingers—nail polish chipped in a Swiss cheese pattern from days of neglect—on the surface of the wooden dining table.

Max observes each of these motions, trying to predict and prepare herself for whatever response Chloe might utter. For the first time in their friendship, Max has no idea what that response will be regardless of how carefully she watches every action. Her heart beats a few times too many in a handful of seconds and she wonders if she's about to add 'heart condition' to her list of 'everything that's wrong right now' from her fear that maybe, just maybe, she can't read Chloe like she could when they were children and more's changed between them that she originally believed. They've managed to separate themselves so far from normal that all bets are off for what's the same and what's different. A flip of a mental switch, and now their thoughts are hidden from each other until they learn the rules of these new thought patterns.

Chloe settles on fixating half-hooded, tired eyes on Max with a sad smile. She looks exhausted and, in that moment, she's decades older than she should be. Decades older than she physically is. "People deal with things differently, Max," she says. "Maybe it's shock and you're subconsciously still processing, but maybe you really don't feel anything about it. He hella doesn't deserve your sympathy, that's for sure."

"It makes me wonder how he got himself started in this mess in the first place," Max says. "What snapped in his head and dropped his marbles all over the floor?"

"They could've been all over the floor to begin with," Chloe says. "How much about his personal life do we really know?"

Max shrugs. Honestly, she's never given Jefferson's past much thought. "He's always had the same style. Black and white pictures of mostly women in… certain circumstances."

"And at some point, he moved from using real, paid, professional models to finding his own," Chloe adds.

"When he talked about models in The Dark Room—real models, like for his career—he sounded disgusted. You'd think that a photographer would be more appreciative of his models. They're a big asset to certain works."

"You say that like Jefferson is capable of appreciating things."

"He appreciated his own work," Max says. "Even if few others did."

"And those few are rotting in prison, right?" Chloe asks.

"As far as I know."

Chloe smirks and her eyes lighten with a glint of mischief. "Think whatever put a hole in Jefferson's head will do the same for those freaks?"

"Chloe, I don't think you should be wishing for people to die."

Chloe's mirth fades from her face and she dons another expression that Max once again finds unreadable aside from the clear anger threaded in it. "They're the reason you went through Hell, Max. Doesn't it bother you that those monsters are still breathing? Still capable of hurting the innocent?"

"No, not really," Max says. _Nothing much bothers me anymore. Not with this horrible nothingness taking over me._ She doesn't voice her thoughts. Chloe doesn't need to know.

"I mean, they're locked up," Max adds once Chloe looks at her like she's lost the rest of her mind. "They're only capable of hurting innocents in their hearts, but physically they can't. Not anymore."

Chloe sighs and rubs her eyes with balled up fists, lack of sleep beginning to take effect. "You're going to be the death of me one day, Max. You think too much."

"I have a lot to think about," Max says. "You know what it's like when something happens, and then you wake up the next day and everything looks different. It feels like someone removed a filter from your vision and you're seeing everything for the first time."

"I know, Max. It's hard, but we'll get you through this. Jefferson, his bitches, other Maxes. All of it and any of it. We'll get through it together," Chloe says.

"I know we will, Chloe. I trust you."

_I just don't trust myself or my other selves right now._

* * *

Tea dates with Kate return to being regular events. An unspoken agreement keeps Chloe and Warren away. They let their girlfriends have this time to themselves, because they deserve at least that much. Despite Chloe's fake fits when it comes time for her to meet with Kate, the quick wink and smile she gives Max let her know that she's okay with this arrangement—as long as it doesn't become a real date, because as Chloe says, those are reserved for her alone.

" _Some bonding, healing, new-age hippie bullshit," Chloe says. She adds a wink at the end._

" _Kate? A hippie?" Max asks. "In what world could you ever see that happening?"_

" _Then it's some born again Christian 'the Lord remade us in his image' healing bullshit?" Chloe asks. She pauses and gives Max the largest 'I'm full of shit' grin she can muster. "Is the tea really Kool-aid, Max?"_

" _That's about as likely as you being made out of pancakes, Chloe."_

" _Well," Chloe says, "I am pretty fluffy and delicious."_

_She laughs when Max elbows her side._

Kate's smiles come easy over the rim of her tea cup, filled with steaming green tea. A splash of cream. A touch of sugar. She heats the water in an electric kettle—a going away gift from her parents—and sets a paper plate filled with her favorite raspberry thumbprint cookies. She'll eat more than half of them through the evening, with Max taking only a few for herself. "We should go on a double date sometime," she suggests. "It'd be fun."

Max returns her smile, but can't find the genuine joy to make it reach her eyes like Kate. "Yeah. Spring break is coming up."

They share in small talk and simple dreams, making plans for the future, but not fully committing to any. Her room is neat and clean, back to its state from before Jefferson's abuse. No more cloth hanging over her mirror, and the curtains are pulled open letting sunlight flood in. It smells like candle wax, but in an oddly pleasant way. Soothing, almost. When asked about it, Kate laughs and says her dad always called her his little light, so he sent her a box of unscented white candles, each marked with a little golden cross. Some light for his light.

Kate wasn't the same near-hollow woman she had been months ago, when Jefferson's torment was fresh even though she couldn't remember it. She's lighter now. More free, like a weight was lifted from her shoulders and she can stand straight and tall again. Unlike Max, she doesn't simply go through motions. There's life fueling her motions. She's a far cry from the girl who was ready to throw herself from a building just to stop the pain.

The girl Max watched succeed in throwing herself from a building before she rewound.

Every movement of hers screams ease and grace. The sluggishness that enveloped her is nowhere to be seen now. And every little reminder that Kate's fine, that she's healing and doing really well with it, bites at Max. She doesn't hold it against Kate, but she wishes she could.

And she's disgusted in herself to begrudge the single person who deserves happiness the most.

She asks, "How do you do it, Kate? How are you so okay?"

Kate's eyes wonder around her room, looking for something Max doesn't see. "You know, Max," she says, "I think it's because I forgave them—both Mr. Jefferson and Nathan."

"You forgave them?"

"What good is holding a grudge? It doesn't solve anything, and it weighs me down. Ill feelings are like poison, aren't they? I figured forgiveness is the only way to cure it." She adds, "What they did is still horrible and no one should ever have been victim to it, but it's done. It's over."

Max looks at Kate, her easy, kind smiles, hair tucked neatly into a bun, and hazel eyes shining. The picture of innocence complete with a heart bigger than she can understand.

And her earlier thoughts are confirmed. Kate is among the few bits of white in this grey scale world, and being so close to her makes Max feel that many shades darker.

"You're a good person, Kate."

The compliment turns Kate's face red and she dons a shy smile. "So are you, Max. Even if you can't see it for yourself right now."

She can't find it in her heart to correct Kate's sincere belief in her. "Thanks, Kate," she says. "I'm glad you think so."

Kate might not buy the fake smile or placating words, but she doesn't comment on either. For now, Max appreciates being left to believe what she wants about herself. Maybe everyone allowing her that luxury is spiraling it and it'll spin out of control, but she can't bring herself to care. There's too much to think about. If she's spiraling, let her. Because the numbness has been around so long that it's starting to hurt.

She spends the night between sheets with Chloe, despite her insistence that they take their relationship slow. It's something they both need, the feeling of skin against skin, and Chloe's 'are you sure?' questions die down after only a minute because nothing has ever felt this natural to either of them.

It's the first time in a long time that Max feels a little less numb, and she's not surprised that it's Chloe who infuses her with a little life once again. Who makes her a little more human.

* * *

Chloe spends her free time on her laptop when Max is in class or on a tea date with Kate. She sifts through every article, blog post, anything about Jefferson. The more she reads, the more she wishes she had been the one to put a bullet in his head.

Since the news articles are less than informative, she focuses most of her time on finding interviews with older victims—the ones who attended and graduated from wherever Mark Jefferson had taught at that time years ago. Some of their comments about the situation are disturbing, but Chloe trudges through them. If they'll help her help Max even a little bit, she'll read every comment any of the victims make. Hell, she'll memorize them if she has to. Anything to stop Max from slipping away right in front of all of them. She hides it well, but Chloe knows. She always knows when Max is hurting.

The first comment that sticks out to her is made by a victim who wished to remain anonymous, not that anyone can blame her for it. She told her interviewer, "I woke up in the morning expecting a normal day, then the police called. I had to go to Oregon to see a red binder filled with pictures of me that I don't remember being taken. They were… I don't have words to describe them, but those pictures are things that I never want to see again. I felt gross the rest of the day. I felt dirty. I still feel like that. I can't go back to normal, not knowing about this. What am I supposed to do?"

_What are any of them supposed to do? Did that bastard even care about how many lives he was ruining?_

"They forced me to look in that binder, but nothing could've prepared me for it. I guess he decided to remove my shirt at some point, because it was gone from some of them. He wrapped something around my chest, I guess to keep me from being fully exposed, but did it really matter at that point? What difference would it have made if I _was_ naked? It'd feel the same, and I'm afraid that I won't be able to scrub away this feeling," said another victim.

Her heart breaks a little more with every comment she reads, but nothing compares to her anger. She wishes she could bring Jefferson back from the dead just to put another bullet in his head. And even that is too kind of a fate for all he's done to dozens of innocent women.

"How do I start putting you back together, Max?" she asks herself in a whisper. "What broke when you learned that he died? What made you shut down?"

Among the web pages she flits through, once phrase appears more than any other. "Why me?" They wanted an answer to a deceptively simple question, but there just wasn't an answer to give.

_Why Max? Why Rachel? Why Kate? Why any of them?_

"It's like being covered in grime that you can't scrub off."

"I'm afraid to go to sleep now, because I know I'll have nightmares."

"Am I just supposed to pretend it never happened?"

The list of victims seems endless, and Chloe shuts her laptop. She rubs her eyes with balled fists and shakes her head. While she thought she could handle going through the pages upon pages of victims telling their stories, she realizes now that it's too close to home for her. Each words makes her idea of Max's experience more harrowing. Jefferson kept her longer. Hell, he had her semi-conscious through part of it from what she'd learned.

Then there's Rachel, who died at the freak's hands fully aware because of her tolerance to drugs. Rachel never had a chance to recover from her ordeal, Max still does.

Chloe likes to imagine Rachel is kicking Jefferson's ghost ass in whatever comes after life.

Max herself is the one who pulls Chloe from her thoughts. "You okay?" she asks.

"Just a headache," Chloe says. "The English essay assignment is kicking my ass."

Max cracks a grin. "You just need to unleash your inner Mark Twain. Anyway, ready to go? I'm starving."

Chloe nods, tucks her laptop under her arm, and steals a quick kiss as she passes Max, heading for her beat-up truck.

Max is silent for most of the ride, but she tends to be these days. They make it half way back to Chloe's house when she speaks and pulls Chloe's mind from her memories of the words of other girls.

"I think I have an idea about what happened," she says.

Chloe glances to the passenger seat, but Max's face is tilted down and her focus is on her lap. "A lot's happened," she says. "What specifically?"

"His death."

Exactly what she wants to talk about. If anyone other than Max tried talking to her about it after her day of research, she would've had a tough time not shoving them out of her car and leaving them on the side of the road. "Let's hear it."

"I think that he was somehow swapped with himself from another timeline. Just like my journal when I found it as a pile of ashes, or that picture of you and Rachel that's physically impossible for me to have."

"Those are objects, Max."

Max says, "I know, but remember when I told you I know that there's another me running around? Maybe her arrival left a path or something for other swaps across timelines."

"Sounds like the plot to one of those RPGs you love playing."

"It's not, and they _are_ fun to play, Chloe. You just hate that you have to read to know what's going on in them sometimes."

Chloe shrugs, tapping her fingers against her steering wheel. "Okay, let's say it was a swap. Why would she swap out a living Jefferson for a dead Jefferson?"

"I don't know," Max says. "Maybe it's not a purposeful thing, like it's just happening at random. Maybe she doesn't have control and can't choose who or what ends up where or when?"

"Then, are you sure that _she's_ here on purpose? There's already a living Max here, what can she gain?"

"Revenge for leaving her behind in a shit hole of a timeline?" Max asks.

"But how do you _know_?" Chloe asks. Max has been beating herself up with worry and paranoia for so long, and Chloe's had to watch. What if it's just nothing?

"I just know," Max says. Her voice sounds strained, laced with frustration. "Why are you so concerned about her reasons anyway?"

Chloe shrugs. "I mean, she's not you. But in a way, she _is_ still you. Or a piece of you? Max, you're the only person who understands completely what she's had to go through, because you went through the _exact_ same thing."

"So?"

"So, maybe she just wants comfort and understanding."

"Or maybe she wants to kill me and take my place in this timeline."

Chloe fights to keep from rolling her eyes. Max had a streak of being unreasonable when they were children, apparently she never fully grew out of it. "Maybe just give it a thought before you do something crazy," she says.

Max makes a sound, staring out of the passenger side window, but doesn't speak again for the remainder of the ride.

* * *

Months pass before she dreams of the lighthouse again. By then Spring is in full bloom and revitalizing the world. But in her dreams, it's always nighttime, making it difficult for her to get a good look at Bullet Necklace.

As usual, Bullet Necklace keeps her back facing Max, only glancing over her shoulder to speak with her.

"There's no tornado this time," Max says. "It's so calm."

Bullet Necklace shrugs and looks out at the water.

"Uh, Chloe asked me to give you a chance. Not in those exact words, but same meaning," Max continues.

"A chance for what?" Bullet Necklace asks. She doesn't sound angry. She doesn't even sound sad. Just empty. The same way Max feels.

Max shrugs, despite her duplicate not being able to see it. "I don't know. To explain why you're here. What you want."

"You're dreaming."

"So?"

Bullet Necklace kicks a rock over the edge of the cliff. "None of this matters if you're dreaming. Besides, why are you so certain I'm not just made up by your imagination? A tool you created to help explain away some of your missing sanity."

"I can feel that you're real."

"And you don't think that people who hallucinate believe their imaginary torments are just as real as you find me to be?"

Max wants to push Bullet Necklace off the edge of the cliff, just like the little rocks she kicks over the ledge. "I can't help you if you don't tell me what you want."

Bullet Necklace stands as still as a statue for a long moment before looking over her shoulder. Her small smile is barely illuminated by the fleeting light of the lighthouse as its oversized lamp spins. "You can't help me at all," she says. "I have to do it on my own."

* * *

She slips out of bed and dresses without Chloe waking—a feat in and of itself. It's still early, but the sun is up and the bus should arrive at the nearby stop soon.

She needs to go to the lighthouse.


	15. Half the World Away

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I do not own Life is Strange or the song "Half the World Away" by AURORA.

Despite the arrival of Spring, the air in Arcadia Bay still holds a lingering winter chill—doubly so in the morning. Max keeps her hands tucked in the front pocket of the slightly too big hoodie she grabbed from Chloe's closet while she waits for the bus, which seems to be taking longer to arrive than normal.

Clouds start to dot the blue morning sky by the time the bus stops and she boards it. At first, they're innocuous. White fluffy clouds, the kind in which children search for the shapes of bunnies or famous faces. Ear buds funnel soothing melodies into her brain as the bus bumps along the road. They do nothing to quell the maelstrom of emotions bubbling within her. What if there is another Max waiting for her at the lighthouse? What if her dreams have been more than just dreams?

One question runs through her head more than the others combined: what does she want?

She practically jumps out of the bus at the stop closest to the lighthouse. It's a bit of a hike away, but it's a path she's taken more times in her life than any other. Before boarding the bus, only a handful of clouds dotted the sky. Now, they encompass it in stormy grey.

"You'll get there and find nothing," Max tells herself as she starts on the dirt path. "Absolutely nothing. Just losing your fucking mind, but no surprise there."

About halfway to the lighthouse, the clouds above her split open and start spilling rain. She expects to see a translucent deer bound out of the trees and guide her again, but Rachel's spirit doesn't show itself this time.

_I hope Jefferson's death let her spirit finally go to rest._

As she nears the top of the path, the rain's transformed into a storm with an intensity to rival the one that wiped out Arcadia Bay across multiple timelines.

Chloe screams on the phone, panicked and unable to halt the oncoming storm while Max stares at framed photos on a white wall.

Flash.

She focuses on the picture of Warren and her, trying not to think of Chloe in the junkyard with a bullet hole so clear in her forehead despite Max's hazy mind.

Flash.

She wonders if she should've brought Chloe with her or left more than a little note with a lie written on it, but there are so many uncertainties. It could be nothing, just a wasted trip to the lighthouse. She'll sit and clear her head for a bit, then go home and pretend everything's normal.

For now, she steels herself and tries to prepare for anything while knowing she'll never be prepared for everything.

* * *

Chloe wakes up slowly, unwillingly. It's been so long since she was able to sleep without Max thrashing from nightmares beside her that she wants to savor it.

But it's a school day and she drags herself upright, getting ready for class. The section of bed next to her is cold, but she chalks it up to Max waking up early from nightmares. It wouldn't be the first time, but she usually wakes Chloe up as well, even if it's unintentional. _I must've really been out for the count if she had nightmares and I didn't wake up._

She ticks off tasks on her mental list of 'things to do before school' and reaches 'brush my teeth' before she notices the sticky note on the bathroom mirror.

Max wrote "Skipping class today for some time to think in my dorm" on it.

Chloe makes her way to the kitchen, where—as she suspects—there's no signs of Max having had breakfast. Unless someone presented food to her in the mornings, Max would forgo eating until lunch. And then she would complain between bites that she's been starving all day—at this point Chloe gets to say, "No shit you're starving. You skipped breakfast."

But Max is still having a hard time, so Chloe grabs her car keys and buys deliciously greasy breakfast from a fast food joint filled with giddiness at her intent to surprise Max. Her girlfriend—a title that still fills her with the same excitement a child feels on Christmas morning waiting to open up presents from Santa, but a title that feels incredibly natural at the same time. Like Max has always been her girlfriend, even if neither of them realized it. She makes her way to Max's dorm room and knocks with a grin wide on her face. "Breakfast is served, Max!" she calls.

She knocks again.

No one answers.

* * *

Lightning illuminates the black sky behind her like the flash of a camera as she stares at the water from the cliff by the lighthouse. "You're still there!" she yells above the harsh wind whipping strands of her short hair. "I know because I'm there too. The Dark Room isn't just physical. It's trapped us mentally."

To say it's strange looking at the back of yourself is an understatement, and Max doesn't know if she should approach this duplicate, or even if she could approach her. It feels so different from her dreams.

At this point, she feels capable of writing the novel _What to Expect After Discovering You Can Fuck With Time:_ _The Aftereffects_ _._

Her duplicate wears Chloe's faux leather jacket, which she found on top of her satchel in The Dark Room. Max knows this because she grabbed the same jacket the first time she escaped before she set out to find Warren and change time. She knows this because her consciousness used to inhabit the body of the girl standing before her.

"It looks just like it did in our vision, doesn't it?" she asks. "Only there's no tornado this time. It already destroyed my Arcadia Bay, but I guess it feels like sparing yours."

Max doesn't know how to even address this duplicate of herself. "I didn't know that you would be left in my place," she calls above the gusts of wind. "How could I?"

Other Max turns to face her, Chloe's three bullet necklace clutched in her fist. Bullet Necklace. The same Max she's seen in her dreams. "What did you think happened?" she demands. "Did you think the timeline you left would just disappear? Did you think everything there would just stop?"

"Well… yeah. Maybe. I don't know, okay?" Max says. "How was I supposed to know it wouldn't? You would've made the same choice, wouldn't you?"

"I tried to, but it turns out my power doesn't work as well as the original's," she spits. "That's how I ended up here. I tried to save Chloe and Arcadia Bay, but I ended up fucking up the timelines because of my tampering."

"That's why small things have been changing. Your timeline overlapping with mine is applying to our personal objects," Max realizes. "Like when I woke up to find my journal as a pile of ashes on my desk. Because Jefferson burned it while we were in The Dark Room in your timeline."

"He was upset that we kicked that rolling tray and ruined his photos," Bullet Necklace adds.

There's nothing more innocent than a teenage girl's journal.

Flash.

"Is that why he was found dead in his cell?" Max asks. "Did Jefferson from another timeline swap with the Jefferson of this one?"

Bullet Necklace shrugs. "I don't know. I saw the news, too. It's the only thing that makes sense, though."

David looms over Jefferson, his gun still smoking.

Flash.

Max's head starts to feel like it's being crushed in a hydraulic press. Something warm touches the top of her lips and pours over them. She touches the skin under her nose with her fingertips and pulls them back to see blood staining them. "Why are you here?" she asks.

Bullet Necklace looks over her shoulder. "I don't know. I never meant to end up here, and I don't know how to get back," she says. "I don't even know if I _want_ to go back. What's left for me in my timeline? Chloe is dead and my hometown is destroyed."

"Then what do you want?"

Bullet Necklace turns fully to face her. She shrugs and cracks a small smile before stretching her arms to the side and lets herself fall backwards over the cliff.

* * *

Chloe knocks a third time on Max's dorm room door. "Max?" she calls out. "Max, you in there? Are you alright?"

A soft creak draws Chloe's attention and she looks behind her to see Kate peeking out of her door. "Chloe? What are you doing here?" she asks, her voice still raspy with sleep.

Chloe holds up the fast food bags and says, "Max left without breakfast, so I thought I'd surprise her with some. Have you seen her?"

Kate steps into the hall and shakes her head. "No, I haven't. She doesn't come to her dorm often anymore. Not that I blame her after everything," Kate says. "I can barely set foot anywhere near Blackwell's pool area because of the Vortex Club. It's too much, but it gets a little better each day."

Chloe nods, not knowing what words could comfort Kate or if Kate even needed comforting based on her calm, even tone. Besides, she has other priorities like a missing Max.

"Why did you think she came here?" Kate asks.

"She left a note saying she needed time to think and was gonna hide out in her dorm instead of going to class today."

"She hasn't done that in a long time," Kate says. "Did she seem okay?"

Chloe shrugs and sets the food down. She pulls out her lock picks from Frank and tries out her minimal skills on the lock of Max's dorm. "She seemed distracted, I guess, but she has been for awhile."

The door swings open to reveal a room devoid of Max's presence, and it feels eerily similar to when Chloe was looking for Max when she was in The Dark Room.

Kate peers from behind her. "Is there anywhere else she would go to clear her mind?" she asked.

"Shit," Chloe murmurs. "Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit." She paces in the hallway for a minute before she realizes where Max went. The thought bursts into her mind with such clarity and absolution that Chloe can't believe she didn't know where Max has been this entire time.

"She's at the lighthouse," Chloe says. She closes the door to Max's dorm and rushes out of the building, leaving a sleepy, mildly confused Kate behind.

"Of course she's at the lighthouse," Chloe mumbles. She pushes her beat-up truck to go as fast as she dares on city roads. "Those dreams have been freaking her out and they're always at the lighthouse."

Between berating herself and making sure she doesn't get pulled over, Chloe prays to a God she stopped believing in years ago that she would find Max safe and sound.

* * *

Max stretches her right arm towards her falling clone and rewinds until she's standing again. "What are you doing?"

"What am I doing? What are _you_ doing?" she counters. Blood is starting to pour from her nose as well. "It's clear that both of us can't exist here. Look around you, time is coming apart. This timeline is being ripped at its seams."

She's right. Max looks around her and sees the webbing that reminds her of pictures of neurons in biology books. It's fleshy with glowing yellow and red patterns pulsating and weaving through it like it weaves through reality. She's seen this before, when she was in her room to tear apart the photo meant for Jefferson's Everyday Heroes Competition, and another time after she woke up from one of her nightmarish visions.

The pain exploding in her head makes it difficult to think, but she wants to save this version of herself. Maybe even try to send her back to her proper timeline. She could still go back to her parents in Seattle. She could still have a relatively normal life and make new friends. Have new adventures. Have a future.

_She sees Kate standing on top of the girls' dormitories, arms spread to her sides as she falls forward. But Max stops her before she hits the ground, and weaves her way through the frozen crowd and the dorms to reach the roof._

" _What are you doing here, Max?" Kate asks. Her voice is strained and a little surprised._

_She's upset. Even though it's raining, Max knows that Kate is shedding tears. Her head feels like it's splitting apart, but she can't give up right now. She needs to save Kate._

" _I'm in a nightmare, and I can't wake up," she says. She's pleading for permission to die, like it's a simple decision that can be made with a coin flip._

_But the voice isn't Kate's and Max looks up to see herself standing on the ledge, Chloe's faux leather jacket barely protecting her from the rain. A lopsided smile giving empty assurance that everything will be alright. That this is right._

" _You don't have to do this," Max says. "I can get you back to your timeline. I can do something, I know I can. You just have to trust me."_

_Bullet Necklace shakes her head. "Haven't you done enough? It's time to let go. Look at yourself. If I stay here, you're going to die. And I probably will, too. You're covered in your own blood because your nose won't stop bleeding when I'm near. My nose is bleeding, and I'm on my way to being covered in blood as well. You know that we can't both exist in the same timeline, and you know that you can't send me back to where I belong. You don't know how."_

" _There has to be another way."_

" _There is no other way. You need to accept that and just let me go. You can't fix everything, Max."_

Her mind returns to reality as she sees the copy of herself that she left behind standing on the edge of the cliff. Rachel's see-through visage appears beside Bullet Necklace and nods at Max. Her presence is peaceful like the first time Max saw her in the lighthouse and her somber expression makes her seem like an ancient spirit wondering the woods with a glowing earring to light her way. While she's not at peace like Max hoped, she at least looks to be at a different sort of peace.

She never realized it back then, but Rachel guided her all along. And she's come to guide her again, to tell her to let go of this other Max who's trapped herself in a timeline in which she doesn't belong. They've never truly met in person, but Rachel was always there when Max needed her the most. Maybe it's just the relentless pain assaulting her head that's making her see things.

Max lowers her right arm to her side. The wind whips around their hair and the hems of their clothes, but Rachel stands perfectly still, unfazed and unaffected. "This is what you want?" Max asks.

"This is what I want," Bullet Necklace confirms.

"Why?"

Bullet Necklace shrugs. "It's all that's left for me. I can't take your place here. I can't go back to my timeline. Hell, I never belonged in that timeline either. I was never supposed to exist, Max," she says. Her voice cracks at that.

"And here I've been thinking that you were going to kill me or something," Max says. She laughs, but it comes out strangled by sobs she didn't expect would surface.

Bullet Necklace laughs a bit at that, too. "I wanted to at first. I just felt so much hatred because you left me trapped in a life that was never mine, but I messed up and found myself thrown between timelines. Imagine my surprise when I get here, and you're just as miserable as I am. I thought you'd be living it up, but you weren't."

"Kinda hard. Everyone's trying so hard to help me, but—"

"But you still feel isolated from them. Like there's some invisible wall you just can't pass through and it's keeping you from really connecting to anyone," Bullet Necklace fills in for her. "Yeah, I felt it, too. In my timeline. Even with people I loved gone, it felt like those who remained were gone as well."

"I'm sorry I left you behind," Max says. "I'm sorry I couldn't save you."

"Not everyone can be saved. Just promise me you'll live for the both of us now? Maybe my consciousness will merge with yours once I'm dead, like I'm a piece of you. After all, in a way, I am," She laughs, more bitter than joyful. "Wishful thinking, right? I'm… I'm glad one of us got a happy ending, at least."

She spreads her arms out to the side again—embracing the world around her—closes her eyes, and tips backwards over the edge of the cliff until she's out of sight. Max's feels tears stinging behind her eyes and rushes over to check the bottom of the cliff.

But she finds nothing. There is no body broken at the base. There's no evidence that Bullet Necklace ever existed. Max wonders if the body was sent back to its proper timeline, but the mechanics of time travel seem to be something she'll never fully understand. All of these consequences she never imagined are throwing themselves at her and she doesn't have the answers or the knowledge to deal with them.

Chaos theory and all that, right? Shit happens because it can. Just like Chloe said an eternity ago in another timeline. In another life. Did she say it here, too? It's too difficult for Max to keep the timelines straight, especially after they started overlapping.

She feels a surprising emptiness at Bullet Necklace's absence. All this time, she expected the worst. Instead, she found a lost soul who was never meant to exist, but understood her on a level that no one else would ever be able to. It was a connection that broke through those invisible walls of isolation, but as soon as it developed, it was severed.

She wishes there was _something_ left at the bottom of the cliff. Anything that she could keep as a memento, a reminder that Bullet Necklace existed. That she _lived_ , no matter how short her life ended up being.

The storms dissipates into a sunny sky like it never existed in the first place. Everything is wiped away like it never happened. She's alone next to the lighthouse with a nosebleed that's tapering off, but not before she ended up covering her hands and shirt in blood. Her head feels so light, it may as well not be attached to her body. At the same time, the pain that makes her believe her brain may be tearing itself apart at the seams reminds her that her head is very much still attached.

She falls to her knees. Then to her side. Crumpling like a soda can underfoot. Then her mind plunges into the darkness of unconsciousness with Rachel's sad smile hovering over her being the last thing she sees.


	16. Stay Alive

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I do not own Life is Strange or the song "Stay Alive" by Jose Gonzales. I also have zero experience in the medical field, as it's not exactly my field. Therefore, I've left medical sections fairly vague, but even then there may still be inaccuracies.

Max taps her eraser on the tabletop that serves as her desk for this class. She does so without forming a conscious melody, making the taps sound more like a metronome than music. Unfailingly steady. Tick. Tick. Tick.

Her old guitar teacher made her follow a metronome during most lessons, once he realized that her rhythmic abilities were lacking.

"These pieces of time can frame us in our glory and our sorrow; from light to shadow; from color to chiaroscuro," drones Jefferson as he weaves around the open spaces between tables before picking an empty one to lean on.

His words ignite a burst of déjà vu in Max, but she can't quite place why. She brushes it off. It wouldn't be the first time Jefferson repeated sections of earlier lectures.

She lets her pencil drop onto the table with a sigh, no longer interested in the repetitive motion. Although someone else seems to be, considering there's the dull sound of a foot tapping the tiled floor. Tap. Tap. Tap. Perfectly spaced, not a beat missed.

A crumpled ball of paper flies across her line of sight, bounces off of Kate's cheek, and lands on the floor. Victoria and her friends try to hide their giggles, and Jefferson either doesn't notice or doesn't care as he continues on with his lecture unfazed.

Max zones out, unable to focus on anything for more than a few moments at a time with the dense fog residing in her mind. She wishes there was something she could do for Kate, who stares only at the notepad on the table in front of her with red-rimmed eyes, but she's at a loss as to what could be bothering her sweet friend. She was just fine the other day. What happened?

The word 'nightmare' crosses Max's mind, but fades just as quickly and she's left wondering what she was just thinking about. But every time she reaches to remember, the answer eludes her.

The bell rings and everyone rushes to leave the classroom while Jefferson tries to hold onto their attention for another minute so they can hear his request for submissions to the Everyday Heroes contest—at which point he fixates a very displeased expression in Max's direction. "I'd like to speak with you after class, Max," he says.

She keeps her distance while Victoria talks with Jefferson, leaning onto his desk and trying to convince him to choose her picture. But Jefferson brushes past her to Max, dismissing Victoria without saying a word.

She gets the hint and storms out of the room, but only after sending a murderous glare at Max, which Max feels doesn't quite belong on Victoria's face. Not that hatred, and not directed at her. Though she has no reason to believe this, as Victoria and her have never seen eye-to-eye or been on friendly terms.

Jefferson clears his throat to draw Max's attention. "I wanted to talk to you about your submission for the Everyday Heroes contest," he says. "Though I'm sure you've guessed that by now."

His voice puts her on edge. Something about its barely concealed frigid tone makes her tense, and a little afraid. If only she could remember why. But when she tries to search her memories for an answer, nothing presents itself.

She pulls her photo from her journal—the one of her looking at her photo memorial wall. She hesitates to hand her it to Jefferson, a voice in the back of her mind telling her that it's a bad idea. It tells her to shred her picture into tiny pieces and leave them scattered on the floor.

Jefferson notices the photo held out halfway towards him and plucks it from her hands with mild surprise on his face. "Is this your submission?" he asks.

Max nods. "Yeah, I guess so."

"After everything, this, Max? Really?" Jefferson asks, but there's something off with his voice. The tone is all wrong and definitely _not_ one he would ever use. His words sound so deeply ingrained with sorrow, that it's like his heart is breaking.

_Maybe he's upset with my picture?_

Max wonders, but can't find an answer to this new riddle—just like the rest of the unanswered questions assaulting her this morning.

"I'm sorry," Max says. "What did you say?"

"I said that was surprisingly easy, Max. I honestly didn't think you were going to enter, but I'm glad you did," he says. "This is the first big step to being a true photographer: letting the world see your work. It might feel like you're baring your soul to the world, but that _is_ the essence of art. Sharing what you see, and how you see it, with billions of other people."

Max nods a few times, trying to forget his first comment. "Yeah, I know. It's important. You've mentioned that before."

This time it's Jefferson's smile that crumples into a confused look. "Have I? I don't remember that, but it _is_ important," he stresses. "You can't be great if you're too afraid to let the world see your work. But I've kept you long enough, Max. See you tomorrow."

Max mutters a goodbye and leaves the classroom, moving through the hallway with her mind in a haze that refuses to clear.

She passes by her own locker, not having a reason to do otherwise, but she stops at Kate's locker. Kate keeps her head down as she exchanges books between her locker and book bag.

"Hey, Kate."

Kate glances over to Max—she notes how listless those eyes seem now—and musters a small smile. "Hi, Max."

"Are you alright? You seem a little down today," Max says.

Kate nods. "Just your run-of-the-mill bad day," she says. "There's no need to worry, but I do appreciate your concern."

"If you want to talk to anything, I'll listen," Max offers.

Kate stays silent long enough that Max wonders if she'll respond at all. Her patience is rewarded when Kate looks over with a small smile under her teary eyes. "Yeah, I know. Thanks, Max. You're such a good friend."

Max returns the smile, but the words meant to accompany it die on her tongue as Kate heaves her bag over her shoulder and walks away.

She smells rain for a second, but the scent vanishes as quickly as it appears and leaves her wondering if it was there at all.

She continues to the school's door, sparing a glance at the women's bathroom as she passes by. A tiny voice nags at her, whispers that she should go in, but Max doesn't see the need. She walks out to the front of Blackwell, inhaling the crisp fall air, but unable to squash the nagging feeling that she's missing something important.

_Since when is it fall?_

Memories of warmth and chills only in the morning flood her mind while the leaves crunch under her shoes as she heads to the dormitories. The walk takes only a couple of minutes, and she's in the hallway outside her room in no time. She looks over her shoulder at Dana's room as she unlocks her own. No one's standing outside of Dana's door, but she swears that someone should be.

She tosses her bag onto the futon in her room, not concerned about doing homework. Not to mention she's not certain she _could_ do her homework with the maddening haze that just won't leave her alone.

_I need to return Warren's flash drive._

The thought comes when she looks at her laptop, sitting sad and alone atop her desk. It feels like it's been months since Warren asked for it back, no matter how impossible that might be since she's only been back in Arcadia Bay for about a month and a half, and was absent for five years prior to her return.

She texts Warren that she'll give it back to him tomorrow at school, and that she's sorry she's held onto it for so long. He responds almost immediately.

Warren: There's no way you've gone through everything on it already.

Max: I know, but you wanted it back.

Warren: What? I haven't asked for it back. Keep it as long as you need.

Max: Oh, sorry. Guess I imagined it. Thanks.

Her phone makes its way to the futon in a neat arc after she tosses it. "This doesn't make any sense," she says to her empty room.

She waters Lisa, proud of herself for remembering, tries to do some homework, then browses cameras online before she goes to bed. "Please let tomorrow be normal," she whispers like a small prayer.

* * *

On Tuesday morning, she wakes with dread crushing her. The reason for it escapes her mind every time she searches for it, but she knows something bad is supposed to happen today. Not just bad, awful. Life changing.

_Life ending._

The words flow unbidden into her thoughts, the voice a whisper of her own. She gets ready for the day in a panic, certain that she's the one who needs to stop whatever this impending doom is that she feels.

She freezes outside of Kate's room, ready for class, but unable to tear her eyes from the unassuming door separating them. Kate was a little off yesterday, but promised to be fine. Still, she knocks and waits.

And waits.

And she waits.

No answer.

"Max?"

Max looks over her shoulder at Dana half-hanging out of her own room in pajamas. "Hey, Dana."

"If you're looking for Kate, she left already," she says.

Is Kate an early bird? When's her first class? Max knows the answers, but just can't remember them clearly. Instead she asks, "Did she seem okay?"

Dana pauses, her sleepy grin fading from her face. "Yeah. Why?"

"She was a little down yesterday. Having a bad day."

"Oh, that's too bad," Dana says. "No, she seemed fine this morning. I didn't really talk to her other than a 'morning', but still."

Max nods a few times. "Thanks, Dana. I'll see you later."

"Later, Max."

After checking the time on her phone, Max heads to the dining hall for breakfast. When the bus leaves its stop as she passes, she double checks her messages.

_I'm supposed to meet someone for breakfast at the Two Whales._

She scrolls through a weeks worth of texts for the sake of being thorough, but finds nothing about Tuesday morning breakfast.

_Wasn't I?_

It's not until Jefferson's class that she loses it. With the clock ticking too loudly and Jefferson's words oddly spaced—or too evenly spaced—who can blame her?

A mess of fear and anxiety squeezes her lungs with an iron grip, and she runs from the room, the frantic and worried cries of her teacher and peers drowned out and far away. She still hears them in the back of her mind when she stops in front of the girls' dormitory to catch her breath.

When she stares at the roof of the building, images begin to overlay. The sun shining over the empty concrete. Kate standing at the top, rain falling around her and ready to jump. Ready to end it all.

" _I can't wake up."_

"Max, wake up."

Max looks around the area in front of the dorm entrance. She can't quite place the voice she heard, no matter how familiar it seemed, but no one is around her who could've spoken for her to hear the words so clearly.

Birds in the trees start to chirp in the painfully steady rhythm with which she tapped her eraser. With which a classmate tapped their foot and Jefferson talked. Chirp. Chirp. Chirp.

"C'mon, Max. Please wake up."

She recognizes the voice this time: Chloe. But when she looks around again, there's no sign of her.

"Chloe!" she calls out. "I _am_ awake. This isn't funny."

Only the wind answers her, rustling the crisp autumn leaves. And the wind stops, leaving her embraced by silence.

"Chloe?"

* * *

The smell of antiseptic creates a burning trail starting from her nose, working its way down her trachea, and pooling in her lungs. She's not sure that it will ever completely fade after she leaves, no matter how much fresh air she forces through that same path.

In the same way, she's not sure that the soreness of sitting in a hard plastic chair day in and day out will completely fade. Or the steady beeping of the heart monitor—although that's the one thing she doesn't want fading. That one little reminder that Max is still alive, despite how pale she looks swathed in hospital sheets.

"Don't you think nap time ended a while ago, Max?" she asks.

The doctors say Max might be able to hear her. At first that led her to talking non-stop in hopes that her voice might break through to the single person who meant the world to her. But every time Max gave no response, Chloe's monologue lost enthusiasm.

Now, she simply says a sentence or two, or asks a small question at random intervals. Enough that Max knows she's hanging around. Waiting.

And waiting.

"You've got a lot of 'Get well soon' cards to read through," Chloe says. "It'd be easier to do that with open eyes. Don't you agree, Max?"

Of course Max doesn't respond. Of course Chloe doesn't expect a response.

She grabs the remote and turns on the small TV mounted on the wall—painted a soft blue presumably to comfort and calm patients. To not look so sterile and plain. She flips through the channels, but it's the middle of a weekday and nothing interesting is on. "How about a soap opera, Max?" she asks. "I know you hate them, but if you don't want to watch, you're gonna have to wake up and turn it off yourself."

_Not that I expect you to. Not anymore._

She tried being the pleading lover. She tried being the babysitter. She tried bargaining. She tried being an annoyance—is currently still trying being annoying.

But there is never a sign that Max is aware of what's happening around her.

"I know this past year has been Hell, but I'll be right here to help you through all of it," Chloe says. She's said that same line more times than she can count, but she hopes that at least once it'll make it through to Max. Is it too much to ask for a minor miracle here?

_Max is falling and Chloe won't make it in time to catch her._

"I understand if you don't want to wake up. I really do. But do you mind if I'm selfish? I can't do this without you. Those five years—when you were in Seattle—they killed me."

_She doesn't remember calling 911. She doesn't hear sirens, but they probably had to park far away and it's taking them too long to get there. While she has no idea what's wrong with Max—aside from the mess of blood staining the lower half of her face and her clothes—she knows Max needs their help._

"But you came back. And I need you to come back again."

_The doctor's words don't make sense to her, so they dumb it down to the simplest explanation they can: Max's brain is bleeding. Something burst like a dam in her head, and now it's bleeding._

* * *

When she woke up next, she found herself in a place she could only describe as empty. She's been alone in the pure white expanse for an eternity with no clock in sight to tell her otherwise. Chloe asked her to wake up, and she tried to. She really tried, but ended up here. Voices still drift in, but she knows her replies never make it to their ears.

"Seriously, Chloe," she yells. "How are _you_ not sick of soap operas yet? You can't tell me that you actually care whether or not the baby is Chris' or if Ramona will wake up from her coma. It's your fault that I know either of the characters."

She lays back on the ground, which is identical to the ceiling. And all of the walls. And everything else in this damned space.

"It looks like a party store threw up in here, Max. Balloons everywhere," Chloe says. Her voice echoes.

"I wish I _could_ see it, Chloe. I just don't know how to wake up from here."

She closes her eyes and curls up onto her side. "Hey, Chloe, think if I manage to fall asleep here, I'll wake up on that side with you?" she asks.

"She'll pull through, Chloe," Joyce says.

"Hey, Joyce," Max says to the emptiness. "Take care of Chloe until I make it back, okay?"

* * *

When she opens her eyes, she's laying in bed back in her dorm room. The wave of anger and frustration is so sudden, she isn't fully aware of it until after she grabs her phone from her nightstand and throws it at the wall. It breaks apart and rests on the floor in pieces. "God damn it!" she yells.

She half-stumbles out of her bed, blankets trying desperately to stop her, and fires up her laptop. Everyone is waiting for her to wake up, but she doesn't know how.

"I know you've been giving me a lot of encouragement, Chloe," she says. "But a little direction would be so much more helpful right about now."

She opens her web browser and searches 'how to wake up' because it's the only plan she has right now. Search results flood her screen—to her mild surprise—but when she looks at them closer, all of the words are blurred. Even after a vigorous eye-rubbing, nothing written on her screen is clear enough to read.

She slams the laptop closed, but wonders what she expected in the first place. If this is her mind, would there even be something useful in those search results, or can she only access information that she already knows on some level of consciousness?

She groans and rubs small circles over her temples to fight off the headache threatening to make an appearance. "Think, Max. When you dream, at which point do you usually wake up? What happens to make you wake up?"

_When was the last time I had a dream I could remember that didn't turn out to be some kind of vision? I'm pretty sure I'm not gonna find a tornado to stare at until I wake up here._

She sits up straight.

_On Wednesday, Chloe and I were still figuring out where we stood with each other. But in this dream world, I never went into the bathroom and she was never shot. Dream-Chloe has no idea I'm in Arcadia Bay right now. If I needed answers from a science geek, she'd be my first choice. However, she's not my_ only _choice._

With a glance at her nightstand, she remembers the current, very broken, state of her phone. "So much for plan A," she mumbles. "No wonder I'm stuck in this dream. My brain must be really scrambled."

* * *

Warren opens his door after the third or fourth bout of relentless knocking, still in his pajamas and rubbing lingering sleep from his eyes. "Max?" he asks, voice raspy and dry. "What are you doin' here this early?"

She shoves past him and into his room. "This is gonna sound kinda crazy," she says, "but you aren't really here right now. _I'm_ not really here right now either. Something's wrong with me and I'm trapped in this dream world, so I need you to tell me how I wake up."

Warren looks much more awake after she spews her crazy into his brain. "What?"

"How can I force myself to wake up from a dream?"

"Do you, uh, need me to take you to the hospital or something?"

"No, just humor me. Please."

His head droops down and he freezes, like a robot who's just been powered down. His voice becomes monotonous and when he smiles, it's sad. Pitying, almost. "Well, you know that in nightmares, you usually wake up when you die," he says.

Max paces in the small free space of his room. "So, I kill myself here and I either wake up, or I die permanently because I misjudged and this is reality."

Warren shrugs.

Max marches from his room and out of the building with him trailing behind her. "But this can't be reality," she says. "Everything is off. _You're_ off." She glances over her shoulder. "Why are you following me anyway?"

"If I knew that you were about to kill yourself, I'd try to stop you," he says. "The real me. At least, you believe this to be true. No matter what, you know I wouldn't let you die alone if I could help it."

Making her way up to the roof of the girls' dormitory is unnerving with creepy Dream-Warren following her. Sure, she knows he cares about her and her well-being, but isn't this laying it on a bit thick?

She storms through the metal door to the roof and walks to the edge, light breeze moving her hair enough to tickle her face. "Are you sure?" she asks.

Dream-Warren comes to stand beside her. "It only matters if you're sure," he says. "How sure are you, Max? Enough to go through with it?"

Max nods a few times. "Yeah," she says. "Yeah, I'm, like, ninety-five percent sure."

"And the other five percent?"

"That's the part of my mind screaming that I'm an idiot."

Max steps up onto the ledge.

"You don't have to do this. You can stay in this dream," Warren says. He sounds sad to see her like this, moments away from ending a life of being trapped inside her mind.

_Is there a part of me that doesn't want to wake up?_

"You're wrong," Max says. She takes a deep breath. "I do have to do this. I hear people sometimes. Talking to the unconscious me. They need me awake. Chloe needs me awake."

She takes another step forward, but Warren's hand on her arm stops her. She meets his eyes. "What?"

"Why jump from the roof?" he asks. He's genuinely curious, Max's known him long enough to recognize that tone of his voice.

Max cracks half a smile. "Poetic justice?"

He returns the half-smile, releases his grip, and takes a step back. "I'm not really Warren, but I still wish you the best on the other side. I'll be tucked away in your mind."

In the moment she falls backwards, the sky flashes to one filled with rain clouds, and Kate falls beside her. They clasp their hands together because even if they're dying, they don't have to do it alone.

When she hits the ground, in the handful of seconds before she wakes up, Bullet Necklace lays next to her on the shore. She grins, and blood drips out the side of her mouth. "We're okay," she whispers.

She gasps awake to a room filled with rapid beeping and yells.

* * *

For the first twenty-four hours, Max is confused and has difficulty moving without trembles. Chloe tries to predict what she'll need before she needs it so she can spare Max the effort and keep her pride intact by not forcing her to ask for anything.

After that, she grows silent. Chloe still keeps vigil at her bedside, but she wonders if Max really understands what's going on and what happened to her. The doctors say the brain is fragile. Max could experience any number of side effects, and she could just as easily make a full recovery given enough time along with the proper treatment.

"Something ruptured in your brain, Max," she says. "It was bleeding. Your parents came and stayed for as long as they could, but had to go back to Seattle."

She refuses to specify that they'll need extra hours of work to pay bills from this very hospital stay, which Chloe has no doubt will rack up quite the price. Max doesn't need the guilt of that on her shoulders with the rest of the world already weighing her down.

Max nods.

Chloe wants to grip Max's shoulders and shake her back and forth until she answers if she understands. If she really, really understands. It all reminds her far too much of the time right after Max was saved from the Dark Room, and her only solace is that at least Max is responding. She's not completely catatonic again relying on hefty medication to be pull her back to reality.

"I figured out that you'd probably be at the lighthouse, you'd be dreaming about it for days, but you passed out right as I got there," Chloe says.

"Sorry," Max whispers.

Chloe snaps her attention fully to Max and asks, "What are you sorry for, Max? You didn't choose to have your brain start destroying itself."

Max gives her a look, and Chloe worries when she can't read into it. There were so many possible effects that the doctors listed—half of them she didn't even understand—that every little oddity becomes a concern. What if Max isn't Max anymore? What if some part of her bled out with her brain?

"Max?"

Max shakes her head. "Forget it."

* * *

It takes about a week after waking for Max to really be coherent. And it's this point that gives Chloe the most hope, when Max explains her time unconscious in bits and pieces. She avoids what happened at the lighthouse.

"I was reliving that week in October. Everything was so similar, but so different," she says, interrupting the news—not that Chloe is listening to it anyway.

"Different how?" Chloe prompts. She learns quickly that Max won't elaborate without being pushed to do so.

"It was normal," she says. "I turned in my Everyday Heroes photo. You weren't shot in the bathroom. Kate never tried to kill herself. It was that week, but without any of the bad events."

"Did you like it better that way?" Chloe asks.

Max shrugs one shoulder. "It's always nice when bad things don't happen, but I could tell it wasn't real. Everything was just _off_. Sometimes the way people talked changed in the middle of a sentence. I think it was my brain's way of conveying what was said to me here to the me living there."

Chloe laughs. "They say comatose patients can hear what's said to them. I guess they've never said how it gets through."

Max is picking at loose threads on the edges of her hospital gown, about as sick of wearing it as Chloe is of seeing her wear it. "Did I say anything while I was out?" she asks. "Like, sort of sleep talk?"

"Honestly, Max, if if weren't for the machines telling me otherwise, I would've thought you were dead. You were absolutely silent up to the moment you woke up," she says.

"I heard you sometimes, and I remember saying that if you really wanted to help me, explaining how to force yourself to wake up from a dream would've been useful."

"I'm guessing you figured it out?" she asked, more of a statement than a question.

"Guess so," Max says.

She doesn't talk about it again, and Chloe doesn't ask.

* * *

Max recovers in time to catch up with her school work and prepare for finals with the rest of her class through a lot of extra sessions with her teachers, learning all that she missed in half the time. It's hard sometimes, with the way her hands still tremble when she's tired. Or how she'll forget things like they refused to get the hint and find their way to her long term memory.

But Chloe's there to help her remember. She's there to reassure her that it's okay to be frustrated, but it's not exactly her fault that her brain decided to start bleeding. She'll hold Max's hands in her own to hide the trembles. To make her feel healthy, no matter how true or false the reality is.

"It could be my fault," Max argues. "Maybe it's a side effect from using my powers. You know how my head hurts after I use them."

"You didn't ask for any powers, Max. Any side effects that come with them aren't your fault either," Chloe says. Her eyes are on fire and the words in her textbook won't stop shifting. She's been studying for way too long, but as long as Max is studying, she will, too. Motivation. Teamwork. All that good stuff.

Max huffs and closes her own textbook, laying her head down on its cover. "It was my decision to use them so much. I tried to play hero, and where did it get me, Chloe?"

"Studying classical poetry at one in the morning?" Chloe asks. She tries to bring Max back from her dark thoughts with humor every time they emerge, but it's getting harder to do. Still, when Max flashes her a tiny smile, she knows it's worth the effort.

Max rolls her eyes, the small smile still in place. "I guess you're not wrong."

"Nope."

When Max yawns, Chloe plucks the latest book from her hands. "Maybe it's time to call it a night," she says. "You're exhausted. _I'm_ exhausted. I mean, we made some good progress, and finals aren't even for another week!"

"You know," Max says, "you could've stopped at 'time to call it a night'. I'm ready to sleep for twelve hours. Maybe twenty-four. My eyes feel like stone from all this reading."

Chloe laughs, stands, and stretches. "Yeah, mine too."

"I'm worried about finals," Max admits as they settle into bed.

"Why?"

"I missed so much because of everything. I know we're studying a lot, and I'm grateful for all your help, but what if it's still not enough?"

"You're smart, Max." Chloe flops onto her stomach, her arm and one leg over Max—who half-heartedly tries to push them off. "Hell, you're so smart, your own brain almost couldn't handle it."

"Is that really something to joke about?" Max asks, staring at the ceiling with her eyes drooping with sleepiness.

Chloe worries at first that she crossed a line she wasn't aware existed, but Max doesn't look angry and merely sounded curious. Genuinely curious. _Was_ it something to joke about?

"I don't know," Chloe admits.

And it's these moments that the love they share truly presents itself to Chloe. The ability to be at peace and comforted by the mere presence of each other. The ability to ask questions and ponder the answers together because even if they're lovers, they're best friends first and foremost. No matter how down about herself Max feels, Chloe considers herself lucky to be with her.

"But at least you're here to joke about it," Chloe adds.

* * *

Max doesn't know how, but she graduates from Blackwell on time with the rest of her class. The same isn't accomplished by Nathan, but he shows up to the ceremony with a volunteer from the psychiatric institution there to supervise him.

"Congrats, Max," he says when she makes her way to him after the formal graduation is over.

She greets him with a smile. "Hey, Nathan. You're looking a lot better."

"They're talking about releasing me to an outpatient program soon," he says. "It'll be nice to take some control over my own life for the first time. Heard about your brain. How are you doing?"

"I'm fine most of the time. I got lucky with only having mild side effects from it, and plenty of immediate medical attention and therapy to keep it that way," she says. "I'm still not at one hundred percent, but the doctors think I'll get there one day."

Nathan nods. "That's good to hear. I'm glad."

One year ago, hearing that sentiment from Nathan would have been a far-fetched concept, but things changed so much that it sounds completely natural now. Expected, almost.

"How soon do you think they'll release you?"

"They make it sound like it'll be in a week or two, granted I pass their evaluations," Nathan says. "Why?"

"Planning a trip to Portland with Kate, Chloe, Warren, and even Victoria is going. Did you want to join?"

Nathan's eyes grow wide and he opens and closes his mouth several times before any words make it out. "You guys want me to go on a trip with you?" he asks. He runs a hand through his hair, messing it up.

"You don't have to," Max says. "It's up to you."

"Are you sure it'd be alright with everyone? Kate… Chloe..."

Max reaches out and places her hand on Nathan's shoulder. "They're alright with it. We all understand that none of us are the same people who first walked into Blackwell back in September. A lot's happened, but we've all helped each other through it. Maybe in September I wouldn't have imagined taking a trip like this, but now I see that we could all be friends and do something normal for once."

"I'd like that," Nathan says, a smile spreading on his face. "I'll talk to the doctors."

"I imagine they'll like you getting a change of scenery. The counselor Chloe makes me see every other week says that going somewhere new is therapeutic for the soul. Well, that and about a million other things are 'good for the soul' according to him."

"Chloe makes you see a counselor? She doesn't seem the type."

"First impressions can be deceiving."

Nathan glances at a head of blue hair bobbing through the crowd of graduates. "Yeah," he says. "No kidding."

* * *

Max loves having the windows rolled down in Chloe's truck and feeling the wind of movement whip her hair around. In the driver's seat, Chloe taps her fingers against the steering wheel in time with the music, a smile crossing her face with every glance at Max. The summer sun soaks into the roads ahead of them, Portland still miles away.

Warren drives his car behind them with Kate in the front with him, and Victoria and Nathan in the back.

Chloe catches Max looking at them in the rear view mirror and says, "I can't believe Nathan actually came."

"When I invited him, I knew he would. You didn't see his face, Chloe. I don't think he believes he deserves this kind of carefree trip with friends—actual friends."

Max knows that his soul still hurts because her own is as well. Only she's had the constant of Chloe in her life, while Nathan's had the constant of existence in an institution—no matter how nice it seemed when she visited.

"I'm not happy with what he did to me last fall," Chloe says. "Or what he helped do to you, Rachel, Kate, and all of the others. I don't think I'll ever really forgive him—and believe me, I try to. He saved your life, after all. But I _do_ understand him more. I mean, being manipulated like that through your entire life. That can't be easy on someone."

"Do you think he still wants to be a photographer?" Max asks. It's the question she's asked herself more and more frequently, only in the context of her own future. With all of the negativity that's been attached to photography from her experiences, can she find a reason to search out and capture beauty as seen through the eyes of a normal person and not a complete psycho?

"Hell, Max, you've talked to him more than I ever have. If either of us knew, it'd be you."

Max shrugs and scoots over to lean against Chloe.

"You're gonna make me crash," she says.

Max flashes a quick grin at her. "I have faith in you."

Max doesn't have all of the answers. She doesn't know what comes next or what the distant future will bring. While she used to be set on becoming a photographer, her future career no longer felt set in stone. She's ready to pursue something different if it feels right. She doesn't know how many more chances she'll get to go on a little road trip with her friends. Or if she'll get to lean against Chloe and feel her hand carding through her hair while she drives.

She doesn't know if she'll ever be okay again, though she knows she'll never return to being the Max who first stepped through Blackwell's doors.

One thing she does know is that no matter where the future takes her, no matter what state of recovery she's in, or which friends she makes and loses, Chloe will be a constant in her life through it all.

And she doesn't need anything more than that.


End file.
